A federal judge in New York on Thursday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from detaining a British researcher whom it accused of promoting the online censoring of American viewpoints.
Imran Ahmed, the founder and chief executive of a nonprofit organization that works to stop the spread of online hate and disinformation, was among five Europeans barred by the State Department from the United States on Tuesday.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media that the individuals, all of whom work to tackle disinformation and abuse on the internet, were barred from traveling to the United States because, he claimed, they “have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.”
The State Department said in a separate announcement that it had “taken steps to impose visa restrictions” on those individuals and that the administration was justified in moving to expel them from the country.
European officials have called the U.S. barring of the five technology regulators and researchers an attempt to intimidate those seeking to call out disinformation on tech platforms.
Elon Musk’s social media company had unsuccessfully sued Mr. Ahmed’s group, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, in 2023 after the group documented a rise in hate speech on the platform since Mr. Musk’s acquisition of the company, now called X. The case was dismissed, but an appeal is pending.
Lawyers for Mr. Ahmed, who now lives in the United States and is a legal permanent resident, said they were concerned that the actions by the State Department pose an immediate threat to his status in the country.
They filed a lawsuit on Wednesday in Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, asking a judge to intervene because they said Mr. Ahmed faced “the immediate prospect of unconstitutional arrest, punitive detention and expulsion for exercising his basic First Amendment rights.”
The judge, Vernon S. Broderick, issued a temporary restraining order shortly after midnight on Christmas Day, blocking the government from “arresting or detaining” Mr. Ahmed and scheduling a hearing on the case for Monday.
Roberta A. Kaplan, a lawyer for Mr. Ahmed, said the speed of the judge’s response was telling. “The federal government can’t deport a green card holder like Imran Ahmed, with a wife and young child who are American, simply because it doesn’t like what he has to say,” Ms. Kaplan said.
Mr. Ahmed, who was born in Britain and is of Afghan descent, said in a statement that he was proud to call the United States his home.
“I will not be bullied away from my life’s work of fighting to keep children safe from social media’s harm and stopping antisemitism online,” he said.
In a statement on Thursday, the State Department did not comment on the judge’s order, but said that “the Supreme Court and Congress have repeatedly made clear: The United States is under no obligation to allow foreign aliens to come to our country or reside here.”
In their complaint, Mr. Ahmed’s lawyers likened his case to those of other foreign nationals who have been targeted, such as Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident whom the Trump administration has sought to deport over his pro-Palestinian comments and activism that the administration equated with “antisemitic hate.”
For his part, Mr. Ahmed has said his organization was founded to look into the growth of antisemitism on the political left. He was among the activists who spoke about how to combat online antisemitism at a 2020 State Department conference during the first Trump administration.
He and the other Europeans who were barred from travel to the United States have been scrutinizing hate speech and disinformation on social media platforms such as X.
In the United States, free speech protections allow social media companies to set their own content policies. President Trump and others on the right have successfully pushed social media companies to roll back moderation rules that they view as silencing conservative voices.
But the platforms have been contending with regulation in Europe. In 2022, the European Union passed a law called the Digital Services Act that requires social media companies to meet transparency standards and to remove certain racist, antisemitic and violent content if it violates national laws.
The European Union recently fined X $140 million under that law for what it said was misleading use of verification check marks, opaque advertising practices and refusing to provide researchers with data access. In response, Mr. Musk lashed out, calling for the abolishment of the E.U. and comparing it to Nazi Germany.
This week, Mr. Musk shared posts on X that cheered the State Department’s decision to bar Mr. Ahmed and the four other Europeans from the United States.
“This is so great,” he wrote in one post. A representative for Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Ahmed’s organization had compiled a 2021 report on anti-vaccination content on the internet that the State Department suggested was critical of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, who is a vaccine skeptic.
Mr. Kennedy also celebrated the travel ban on social media, hailing the United States as “the mecca for freedom of speech!”
Aishvarya Kavi works in the Washington bureau of The Times, helping to cover a variety of political and national news.
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