NEWARK, NJ – A New Jersey man who sued the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) saw his push for a swift legal victory denied this week after a federal judge ruled that he failed to properly serve the agency before requesting default judgment.
Jhonathan Cabrera, representing himself in court, had filed a motion for default judgment against USCIS and other unnamed federal defendants, claiming they failed to respond to his lawsuit in time. But in an order issued Monday, U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton denied the request, citing a critical procedural flaw: Cabrera never obtained a required entry of default from the Clerk of Court, nor did he prove the defendants had been properly served.
Under federal rules, a plaintiff seeking default judgment must first show that the defendant was legally served and failed to respond — a two-step process that begins with the court clerk entering default. Cabrera, according to court documents, did neither.
The court noted that proper service on the United States and its agencies requires that the plaintiff deliver a copy of the summons and complaint to both the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the district in which the action is brought and the U.S. Attorney General in Washington, D.C., as laid out in Rule 4(i) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.