A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has ruled that the State Department cannot use the president’s travel ban to deny visa applications to diversity lottery winners.
U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan issued a preliminary injunction on August 21, in the case Aye Aye Thein v. Trump, granting partial relief to over 100 immigrants from countries affected by the travel restrictions.
Judge Sooknanan’s order requires the Secretary of State to undertake “good-faith efforts” to expeditiously process and adjudicate pending diversity visa applications by September 30, 2025 – the fiscal year deadline after which lottery winners lose their eligibility. The court specifically enjoined the State Department from issuing visa refusals based on 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f) or Proclamation 10949, Trump’s June 2025 travel ban affecting 19 countries.
The judge distinguished between the president’s authority to restrict entry into the United States versus the power to halt visa issuance, ruling that Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act “addresses only the question of entry, not the issuance of visas”. This legal distinction forms the crux of the decision, with Sooknanan stating that the provision’s language is “plain as day” in limiting presidential authority to entry restrictions.
The lawsuit was filed in July 2025 by 55 diversity visa selectees from Afghanistan, Myanmar (Burma), Togo, Somalia, and Iran, along with 47 of their family members. These individuals had won the right to apply for permanent residency through the Diversity Visa Program, which annually provides 55,000 visas to promote immigration from countries with historically low rates of U.S. immigration.
Presidential Proclamation 10949, issued on June 4, 2025, and effective June 9, 2025 fully restricts entry for nationals from 12 countries: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. It partially restricts entry for citizens of seven additional countries: Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.
The administration justified these restrictions by citing national security concerns, inadequate identity-management protocols, and high visa overstay rates among affected countries. The proclamation affects approximately 29,000 diversity visa applicants from banned countries who won the 2024 lottery.
Judge Sooknanan acknowledged significant limitations in the relief she could provide. The injunction does not apply to applicants whose visa requests were already formally denied, as courts lack jurisdiction to review consular decisions under the doctrine of “consular non-reviewability”. Additionally, even if successful applicants receive visas, they could still be denied entry at U.S. ports of entry based on the travel ban.
The court noted that only 82 of the 84 plaintiffs remain eligible for relief, as two had already received formal visa denials before the ruling. Judge Sooknanan also cited the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which ended agency deference, to reject the Justice Department’s argument that the State Department’s “longstanding practice” justified the visa denials.
