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The Trump administration and U.S. State Department can no longer require diversity visa lottery winners to quarantine elsewhere before traveling to America to collect their green cards, a judge ruled Monday.
U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta of the District of Columbia said the administration’s 14-day quarantine mandate – which came shortly after he ordered the State Department to allow the lottery winners to collect their entry papers before the Sept. 30 deadline – was illogical.
Federal officials argued in writing and during a hearing Monday that requiring the lottery winners from areas subject to coronavirus travel bans to quarantine outside those areas for two weeks first was compliant with Judge Mehta’s earlier order.
“No, it is not,” Judge Mehta wrote in an order issued late Monday. “The quarantine requirement is premised on a faulty legal position, and it is irrational, too.”
The judge went on to write that the State Department’s action “serves no obvious purpose except to delay the issuance of (the) visas.”
The case before Judge Mehta arose from five lawsuits contesting President Donald J. Trump’s proclamations in April and June barring entry to the U.S. for those with green card applications and some work visas.
Among the plaintiffs are more than 1,000 diversity visa lottery winners and their affected family members, American employers and others. Their lawsuits were consolidated – though not as a class action lawsuit – and together they petitioned the court for relief from the restrictions keeping them out of the country.
The U.S. makes as many as 50,000 immigrant visas available annually through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program. Lottery winners are selected randomly among applications submitted from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
At the same time the diversity visa lottery winners have been fighting in court, the federal travel bans enacted in response to the coronavirus pandemic in March are still in effect. They apply to designated COVID-19 hotspots – the United Kingdom, Ireland, the 26 European countries that comprise the “Schengen Area,” Iran, Brazil and China.
Having heard from both sides, Judge Mehta issued an injunction Sept. 4 instructing the State Department to clear the way for the 45,000 remaining visa lottery winners to get their entry papers before their deadline. Immigration law gives lottery winners until Sept. 30 to claim their visas or try their luck next year. The judge asked the administration to make “good faith” efforts to process the paperwork.
The State Department responded by directing consulates and embassies abroad to start processing the diversity lottery winners’ visas, but said they would still be subject to the travel ban. That meant, according to the administration’s instructions, visa lottery winners from countries listed in the travel ban would have to quarantine immediately in a country not listed in the travel ban for 14 days before they could meet with State Department officials there to begin the process to claim their visas.
Lawyers for the government argued the quarantines were necessary to avoid having State Department workers in the COVID-19 hotspots conduct the requisite in-person interviews with the lottery winners. The idea was to protect them from possible infection, the administration said.
Judge Mehta was unconvinced.
The diversity visa lottery winners “are simply being channeled to appear before a different consular officer outside of the covered regions (after traveling to do so),” he wrote. Yet no other people seeking other kinds of visas in the hotspot countries are likewise required to quarantine first.
“The quarantine requirement seems designed to frustrate (the lottery) applicants who might benefit from the court’s order,” the judge said in his ruling Monday. “In both form and spirit, the policy is at odds with this court’s injunction.”
The lead plaintiffs in the consolidated lawsuits are Domingo Arreguin Gomez, Mohammed Abdulaziz Abdul Mohammed, Afsin Aker, Claudine Ngum Fonjong and Chandan Panda.
Do you know someone who won the diversity visa lottery but hasn’t been able to claim it because of the Trump administration’s restrictions? Have you been prevented from accepting your visa? Tell us about it in the comment section below.
The plaintiffs in the Gomez lawsuit are represented by Jesse M. Bless of the American Immigration Lawyers Association; Karen C. Tumlin and Esther H. Sung of the Justice Action Center; Laboni A. Hoq; Stephen Manning, Nadia Dahab and Tess Hellgren of Innovation Law Lab; and Andrew J. Pincus, Matthew D. Ingber and Cleland B. Welton II of Mayer Brown LLP.
The plaintiffs in the Mohammed and Fonjong lawsuits are represented by Rafael Ureña, Curtis Lee Morrison and Abadir Barre of the Law Office of Rafael Ureña.
The plaintiffs in the Aker lawsuit are represented by Charles H. Kuck of Kuck Immigration Partners LLC.
And the plaintiffs in the Panda lawsuit are represented by Geoffrey Forney of Wasden Banias LLC.
The Diversity Visa Lottery Lawsuit is Domingo Arreguin Gomez, et al. v. Trump, et al., Case No. 1:20-cv-01419, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
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