A federal judge has ruled that a Trump administration policy barring immigrant visas to citizens of 75 countries violated federal immigration law by discriminating on the basis of nationality. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas of the Southern District of New York concluded the measure unlawfully prevented consular officers from issuing visas solely because of an applicant’s country of origin.
The State Department announced earlier this year that it would suspend immigrant visa processing for people from nations including Afghanistan, Brazil and Yemen, saying the restriction was needed because the administration believed applicants from those countries were likely to require public assistance after arriving in the United States. According to Vargas’s ruling, the policy prohibited visa issuance even when individual consular officers had evaluated applicants and determined they were likely to be self-sufficient.
“In many ways, this is not a challenging case,” Vargas wrote, finding that the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 bars nationality-based discrimination in immigrant visa decisions. The judge also cited a diplomatic cable that directed consulates to refuse visas for applicants who had already been approved but whose printed visas had not yet left the consulate, showing the policy was implemented as a blanket bar rather than a case-by-case screening measure.
Vargas held that the policy was contrary to law and exceeded the authority of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Her decision vacated the visa-suspension policy and set aside any visa denials that rested solely on the rule, allowing affected applicants to resume individualized adjudication.
A State Department spokesperson said the administration is focused on protecting Americans by maintaining high standards for screening and vetting visa applicants and declined to comment on ongoing litigation. When the ban was announced, the department said it would remain in place until officials could ensure new immigrants would not “extract wealth from the American people.”
The visa suspension formed part of a broader Trump administration effort to restrict both legal and unauthorized immigration. That broader push included an executive order aimed at restricting birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to certain parents; the Supreme Court recently rejected that effort as unconstitutional after lower courts blocked it.
Legal advocates who challenged the visa ban called the policy baseless and discriminatory. Susan Welber, supervising attorney at The Legal Aid Society, which represented plaintiffs, said the ban was “premised on a fiction” that people from the targeted countries were likely to use public resources. Plaintiffs included immigrant legal service groups such as the Catholic Legal Immigration Network and African Communities Together, six U.S. citizens who had filed family-based petitions for relatives, and five intending immigrants who had filed employment-based petitions for themselves.
Advocates said the suspension separated families and stalled lawful immigration processing. Anna Gallagher, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, said the policy had kept spouses, parents and children apart who were following legal procedures. Antionette Dozier, senior attorney at the Western Center on Law & Poverty, said the ruling restores fair, individual review for applicants and reaffirmed that no administration can override statutory protections by deeming an applicant’s nationality unacceptable.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys said the ruling will allow their clients to resume normal immigration processes and pursue reunification and employment-based immigration on a case-by-case basis.