A federal court in New York has denied President Trump’s nationality-based ban on immigrant visa processing for people from 75 countries, according to a press release from the National Immigration Law Center.
The court decided that the ban exceeds the Secretary of State’s authority and violates Section 1152(a)(1)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which prohibits discrimination based on nationality. The court ordered the State Department to restore case-by-case evaluation of visa applications.
“The court made clear that immigration laws cannot be used to justify discrimination,” said Joanna Cuevas Ingram, Senior Staff Attorney at the National Immigration Law Center.
According to New York Immigration Coalition, the proposed bans would have disproportionately affected countries with nonwhite or ethnic minority populations, including countries in Africa, Asia, Latin American, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The Trump administration cited concerns about these immigrants becoming “public charge risks.”
A State Department spokesperson told NPR that the Trump administration is “protecting the American people by upholding the highest standards of screening and vetting of visa applications.”
The federal court’s denial of the bans comes after the Supreme Court order in June upholding constitutional right to birthright citizenship, despite Trump’s efforts to bar citizenship for children born in the US to parents who entered the country illegally or who are living with temporary visas.
The Federal court’s ruling this August “means that a mother in Brooklyn can go back to planning for being reunited with a daughter that she has been waiting years to hold,” said Nurad Awawdeh, President and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition. “This is a victory for fairness, justice and all the families who were separated by this discriminatory policy.”
