Court strikes down US visa suspension covering Bangladesh, 74 other nations

Dhaka: A U.S. judge on August 21 struck down a Trump administration policy that had suspended immigrant visa issuance to applicants from 75 countries, including Bangladesh, ruling that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had exceeded his statutory authority.

U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas, sitting in Manhattan, said the policy announced by the State Department in January was "patently unlawful" and violated federal immigration law, which explicitly strips the secretary of state of authority over how consular officers process immigrant visas.

"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 ruling.

The January suspension affected applicants from a wide range of countries, including Bangladesh and Pakistan in South Asia, Brazil, Colombia, and Uruguay in Latin America, Bosnia and Albania in the Balkans, and several nations across Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean.

The State Department had defended the suspension by arguing that applicants from the listed countries were "at a high risk for becoming a public charge and recourse to local, state and federal government resources in the United States."

The lawsuit was brought by immigrant rights groups Catholic Legal Immigration Network and African Communities Together, along with individual visa applicants and U.S. citizens sponsoring family members from the affected countries for immigrant visas.

President Donald Trump has pursued a broad immigration crackdown that his administration says is intended to strengthen domestic security.

Rights groups have argued that the crackdown has infringed on free speech and due process protections and has fostered an unsafe climate, especially for ethnic minorities who say they face heightened racial profiling.