A Biden-appointed federal judge just wiped out one of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s toughest immigration controls, and she used one extraordinary phrase to do it.

U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas called the government’s legal position an exercise in “Orwellian logic” before striking down the State Department’s immigrant-visa freeze covering 75 countries.

The policy was designed to stop applicants deemed likely to become dependent on American public benefits.

But Vargas ruled Friday that Rubio did not have the statutory authority to order categorical visa refusals after consular officers had found applicants otherwise eligible.

Conservative reaction was immediate:

The U.S. District Court’s 61-page opinion says the January directive required consular officers to refuse immigrant visas to nationals of the designated countries regardless of an individualized finding that an applicant was not likely to become a public charge. The court calculated that the nationality rule reached applicants from nearly 40% of the world’s countries and displaced the case-by-case judgment Congress assigned to consular officers.

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In Vargas’s view, the officer could review financial records, family circumstances and other evidence, then decide the applicant qualified, but that determination no longer mattered because the cable permitted only one result.

The outcome had already been dictated from above: refusal.

That is where the judge reached for George Orwell.

She rejected the government’s argument that the refusals were lawful simply because they were formally entered under an existing section of immigration law. Vargas wrote that the cited provision authorizes refusals when an applicant is legally ineligible, not when an otherwise eligible applicant happens to come from one of the listed countries.

The opinion also says Congress placed the final eligibility decision in the hands of individual consular officers. A cable from the secretary of state could guide their work, Vargas reasoned, but it could not force them to reach one predetermined result after the statutory review was complete.

That distinction drove the court’s conclusion that the policy was both contrary to law and beyond Rubio’s authority.

The ruling drew attention far beyond Washington because the freeze reached nearly 40% of the world’s countries.

Nigeria was among the nations directly affected:

The U.S. Department of State said when the pause took effect that President Trump wanted immigrants to be financially self-sufficient and not become a burden on Americans. The department announced that immigrant-visa issuance would stop on January 21 while officials reviewed screening and vetting standards for nationalities considered at high risk of relying on public benefits.

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The department was reviewing its screening and vetting standards for applicants from countries it considered high-risk for public-benefits use. Its list included nations across Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Dual nationals applying with a valid passport from a country outside the list were exempt.

The policy applied to immigrant visas, not ordinary tourist or student visas. It covered countries including Afghanistan, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Russia, Somalia and Yemen while the department conducted its broader review.

State Department data cited at the time said more than 30% of immigrant households from the listed countries received some form of public assistance. That was the administration’s case for taking a tougher, country-wide approach instead of leaving every determination to the existing process.

The legal problem, according to Vargas, was not whether the government could examine public-charge risk. Federal law already permits that inquiry.

The problem was Rubio’s order that officers “must refuse” visas based on nationality even after the ordinary review pointed toward eligibility.

The judge concluded that the order violated the Immigration and Nationality Act’s nationality-discrimination provision, the law governing valid visa refusals and a federal regulation requiring refusals to rest on grounds set out in law.

She also held that Rubio’s directive exceeded the authority Congress gave the secretary of state.

Here is how the decision was being summarized Saturday:

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Fox News reported that the judge vacated both the policy and visa refusals resting solely on it, directing the government to revisit those cases. The ruling followed a lawsuit by immigration organizations, prospective employment-based immigrants and U.S. citizens trying to bring family members from affected nations into the country.

That does not mean every affected applicant automatically receives a visa.

The court’s order sends the cases back for further proceedings without the categorical freeze. A refusal supported by another independent legal ground remains intact, and every applicant must still satisfy the rest of federal immigration law.

The State Department told Fox that the Trump administration remains committed to the highest screening and vetting standards and would not comment on pending litigation.

The plaintiffs included two immigration organizations, five prospective employment-based immigrants and six U.S. citizens seeking visas for family members. Vargas granted only part of their summary-judgment request, leaving other claims unresolved and ordering both sides to submit a joint letter by September 11.

In other words, the policy itself has been vacated, but the lawsuit and the administration’s options are not finished.

An appeal would hardly be surprising.

For now, however, one district judge has erased a sweeping Rubio policy from the books and ordered the government to reopen the visa decisions that rested on it alone.

This immigration fight is far from over.

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This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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