President Donald Trump’s administration had decided to suspend the processing of immigrant visas for citizens of 75 countries, including Bangladesh. A U.S. judge struck down that policy on Friday. Judge Jenet Vargas of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan said the policy exceeded Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s legal authority.
She further said the policy, announced by the State Department in January, was “clearly unlawful” and conflicts with federal immigration law, which explicitly limits the secretary of state’s authority over consular officers’ processing of immigrant visas. The news was reported by Reuters news agency.
In her ruling, the judge wrote that the policy, which entirely barred issuing immigrant visas based on an applicant’s nationality, directly nullifies the process established by law. The State Department’s suspension, which took effect in January, covered citizens of countries including Brazil, Colombia and Uruguay in Latin America; Bosnia and Albania in the Balkans; Bangladesh and Pakistan in South Asia; and numerous other countries across Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean.
The State Department said at the time that applicants from these countries were at “high risk of becoming dependent on public assistance in the United States and relying on the resources of local, state and federal governments.” The U.S. State Department did not immediately comment on the judge’s ruling.
Judge Vargas, appointed by former Democratic President Joe Biden, issued the ruling in a case brought by immigrant-rights organizations the Catholic Legal Immigration Network and African Communities Together, along with immigrant-visa applicants and U.S. citizens from the affected countries.
Those U.S. citizens had sponsored visas to bring family members to the United States from the countries in question. President Donald Trump has framed his hardline anti-immigration campaign as a step taken to strengthen U.S. domestic security.
Rights advocates, however, say the campaign has violated freedom of expression and due-process rights, and has created an unsafe situation particularly for racial minorities. They have also raised concerns about racial profiling by law enforcement based on ethnic identity.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report