Trump visa ban on Bangladesh struck down
A federal judge in New York has struck down a Trump administration policy that suspended immigrant visa processing for applicants from 75 countries, including Bangladesh, ruling that the measure exceeded the legal authority granted to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Judge Jeannette Vargas of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York issued the ruling on Friday, calling the policy “patently unlawful” and finding that it conflicted directly with federal immigration law.
According to the court filing, Vargas wrote that Congress had explicitly stripped the secretary of state of authority over how consular officers process immigrant visa applications.
“The Policy, which categorically prohibits the issuance of immigrant visas based upon the nationality of the applicant, represents a direct abrogation of this statutory scheme,” she wrote in her decision.
Vargas, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, also pointed to a specific provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act barring discrimination in visa issuance on the basis of race, sex, nationality, place of birth or place of residence, concluding that the State Department could not lawfully deny visas purely on the basis of an applicant’s country of origin.
The State Department announced the suspension on January 14, 2026, and it took effect a week later, on January 21.
The pause covered immigrant visas — the category that leads to lawful permanent residence, or a green card — for applicants from nearly 40 percent of the world’s nations.
The affected countries spanned several regions: Brazil, Colombia and Uruguay in Latin America; Bosnia and Albania in the Balkans; Pakistan and Bangladesh in South Asia; and a large number of nations across Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean, including Afghanistan, Somalia, Haiti, Egypt and Iran.
The suspension affected not just new applicants but also immediate relatives of US citizens, along with family-sponsored, employer-sponsored, religious worker, diversity and returning-resident visa categories.
The State Department defended the policy at the time by saying applicants from the listed countries were “at a high risk for becoming a public charge” and drawing on local, state or federal government resources once in the United States.
Officials said the pause would remain until the department completed a broader review of its screening and vetting procedures.
The legal challenge
The lawsuit was brought by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network and African Communities Together, two immigrant rights organisations, together with individual immigrant visa applicants and US citizens who had sponsored family members from the affected countries.
The plaintiffs argued that the policy went far beyond the executive branch’s authority and swept up ordinary family and work-based visa cases at the consular processing stage, rather than being a narrowly targeted vetting measure.
In her ruling, Vargas found that the administrative record indicated the 75 countries had been selected based on public-assistance and welfare-use statistics compiled by the Council of Economic Advisers, rather than through any individualised assessment of applicants’ likelihood of becoming a public charge — a standard immigration law does allow for, but only case by case.
The ruling is the latest legal setback for a broader immigration crackdown pursued by the Trump administration over the past year, which officials have defended as necessary to tighten border security and vetting standards.
Rights groups have criticised the visa suspension and related measures as discriminatory.
In late January, more than 70 members of Congress, led by Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus chair Rep.
Grace Meng, urged Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to reverse the policy, warning it would affect over 135,000 Asian immigrant visa holders alone.
The visa suspension followed a string of other restrictions introduced by the administration in quick succession, including a broader travel ban covering 39 countries that took effect on January 1, and a pause in diversity visa issuance introduced in late December.
It is not yet clear whether the administration will appeal Friday’s ruling.
