A federal judge ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration had unlawfully withheld visas from a number of people because of a travel ban President Trump instituted in June, which barred visa access for individuals from 19 countries.
The decision from Judge Sparkle Sooknanan in Federal District Court in Washington applied narrowly to seven dozen people who had been selected for entry to the United States on “diversity visas.” Such visas offer a pathway to permanent residency, and 55,000 of them are granted every fiscal year to people from countries with low immigration rates to the United States.
She found that those individuals were then unlawfully refused the visa because of the travel ban Mr. Trump had instituted more than a year after they had won the lottery in May 2024. The ruling could have broader implications for the approximately 29,000 others from countries covered by the travel ban who won the diversity visa lottery in 2024, according to State Department data.
The individuals involved in the lawsuit hailed from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Togo, Somalia and Iran, and their visas were either denied outright or remained in processing. The lawsuit argued that the Trump administration had stalled, refusing to process visa requests before Sept. 30, when their eligibility to receive a visa through the program is set to expire.
Judge Sooknanan, who was appointed by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., rejected the government’s argument that the State Department should be allowed to act on Mr. Trump’s order and ignore pending applications from countries that had been included on the list, given that existing laws allow people to get visas through the lottery program.
In her opinion, Judge Sooknanan cited a precedent set by the Supreme Court last year that prohibits federal agencies from relying on their own interpretations of the law to make policy, adding that the State Department had done so in this case.
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The post State Dept. Unlawfully Withheld Visas Under Trump’s Travel Ban, Judge Rules appeared first on New York Times.
