Trump Travel Ban Harms Visa Applicants, Class Action Claims

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A class action lawsuit takes aim at Trump’s travel ban, claiming that it harms visa applicants.

The Trump travel ban class action lawsuit tells the story of Mania Pour Aghdasi who is a U.S. citizen residing in California. 

Aghdasi claims that the Trump Administration’s travel ban caused her family undue injury during a time of grief, by preventing her father in Iran from being able to come to the United States during the final years of his life.

Aghdasi alleges that her brother and father lived together in Iran, and after her brother died of brain cancer, she and her father decided that her father should move to the United States so that the two family members could be together in their grief. Aghdasi is her father’s last living family member. She assisted her father in applying for a visitor’s visa to come to the United States. She states that Iran is a country banned under the current travel ban, and that most countries banned are majority Muslim countries.

Over the course of 14 months, Aghdasi claims the application was in limbo, neither accepted nor denied. She says that during this period, she repeatedly contacted the State Department, the White House, congressional representatives, and other government representatives in an attempt to hear news about the visa or get it accepted.

Adghdasi states that her father died on Dec. 24, 2017, and two weeks later, she was notified that his visa application had been denied. She argues that at no point was her father’s application considered for a waiver of the ban.

According to the Trump travel ban class action lawsuit, “Ms. Aghdasi’s story is emblematic of the destruction and tragedy that has been wrought by the [travel ban’s] reckless implementation, but her experience is sadly not uncommon.”

The Trump travel ban class action lawsuit claims that the current travel ban is unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment because it denies individuals’ right to due process, and violates two laws — the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

According to the plaintiffs, the current version of the travel ban “specifically states that ‘case-by-case waivers’ may be granted by consular officers under non-exclusive list of circumstances for visa applicants from the banned countries.”

The Trump travel ban class action lawsuit argues that despite this allowance, the Trump administration directly contradicts the terms of the ban and instead “issued blanket denials, regardless of personal circumstances and without giving applicants the opportunity to argue their case, thereby violating the APA, the INA, and [visa applicants’] right to Fifth Amendment due process.”

In support of their argument that the Trump Administration violates its own stated processes, the plaintiffs note that the State Department published a report saying that only about 100 visa applicants from banned countries had been accepted, meaning the visa rejection rate was more than 98 percent.

The 2017 travel ban class action lawsuit proposes a Class made up of American citizens, lawful U.S. permanent residents and foreign nationals “who have approved visa petitions, or who assisted family members with filing for U.S. visas, and who seek entry into the United States to be reunited with their American families of fulfill significant U.S. business relations.”

The Trump travel ban class action lawsuit notes that the current ban is the third travel ban that the administration attempted to institute in 2017, and that each ban applied mostly to Muslim-majority countries. The Trump Administration travel ban class action lawsuit states that the first two versions of the bans were struck down in federal district and appellate courts, and that the Supreme Court is currently in the process of determining the constitutionality of the current ban.

The plaintiffs are represented by Luis Cortes Romero and Alma David of the Immigrant Advocacy & Litigation Center PLLC, Mark D. Rosenbaum and Judy London as public counsel, Shabnam Lotfi and Veronica Sustic of Lotfi Legal LLC.

The Trump Administration Travel Ban Class Action Lawsuit is Soheil Vazehrad, et al. v. Donald J. Trump, et al., Case No. 3:18-cv-01587, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Fransisco Division.