The Two Visa Systems

A federal judge did not mince words. The administration's freeze on immigration processing for 39 countries was, she found, a "pretext to mask prohibited anti-immigrant sentiments" — a policy that penalized people "solely by the happenstance of their birth" ^[1].

USCIS's hold on adjudications cannot be attributed to anything that these individuals did wrong; rather, it arises solely by the happenstance of their birth. — T. J. McConnell

The ruling, handed down in June, is the sharpest judicial rebuke yet to what has become the most visible half of the administration's immigration agenda: a broad, indiscriminate effort to reduce the number of people entering the United States, by whatever mechanism is at hand. That effort is real, it is vast, and it is increasingly running into a wall of federal judges. The numbers are not in dispute. Visa issuances fell by roughly 250,000 — about 11 percent — in the first eight months of 2025 compared to the year before ^[2]. A 19-country travel ban went into effect. Immigration processing was paused for nationals of more than 75 countries, from Brazil to Myanmar, leaving hundreds of thousands in legal limbo and drawing more than 33 lawsuits ^[3]. International student visas dropped over 30 percent. Refugee admissions fell by 90 percent, and H-1B visas for skilled workers dropped roughly 25 percent ^[4]. This week, DHS issued a final rule capping F and J student visas at four years and journalist visas at 240 days — or 90 days for Chinese nationals — replacing what had been open-ended stays with fixed, renewable permits that require re-vetting ^[5]. The courts have noticed. The Ninth Circuit blocked the administration's asylum restrictions at the southern border, ruling they conflicted with the Immigration and Nationality Act ^[6]. A separate federal judge halted the green-card freeze for travel-ban countries, finding it likely violated the prohibition on nationality-based discrimination ^[7]. The 39-country ruling was the most sweeping: the judge found the freeze arbitrary, discriminatory, and built on a rationale that did not hold up to scrutiny. So the broad track is contracting under legal pressure. But that is only half the story — and the half that has been covered most heavily. The question the legal reversals raise is a different one: why are some of the administration's visa actions drawing lawsuits and injunctions, while others are not being challenged at all? The answer requires lining up a set of actions that, taken one by one, look like isolated foreign-policy moves. Seen together, they form a second track — one that repurposes visa and entry restrictions as a precision coercive instrument aimed at named individuals and their families, not at whole populations. And it is multiplying. Start with the International Criminal Court. In February 2025, the administration sanctioned ICC personnel and their families — visa bans plus asset freezes under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — in retaliation for the court's investigation of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and its arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu. Marco Rubio vowed to "dismantle the ICC — brick by brick, if necessary" ^[8].

dismantle the ICC—brick by brick, if necessary. — Marco Rubio

The sanctions blocked judges from accessing banking, credit cards, and health insurance — what the judges themselves called "tantamount to the financial death penalty" ^[9]. Four named judges sued in federal court in New York. The EU condemned the move. But no court has blocked the sanctions. Move to Iran. In April, Rubio revoked the lawful permanent resident status of Iranian nationals tied to the regime — including the niece of Qasem Soleimani and the son of former vice president Masoumeh Ebtekar, the woman known as "Screaming Mary" of the 1979 hostage crisis. Rubio's statement was explicit: "America can never become home for anti-American terrorists or their families" ^[10].

Masoumeh Ebtekar – also known as “Screaming Mary” – was the spokeswoman for the Islamic terrorists who stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days – subjecting them to beatings, starvation, and mock executions. — Marco Rubio

The administration is reportedly planning to expand these revocations to 3,000 to 4,000 Iranian elites — a campaign that coincides with the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and targets the extended family networks of a regime the administration is actively fighting. Then there is the Western Hemisphere. In February 2025, the U.S. imposed visa restrictions on 26 individuals — officials, their families, and private actors — for "undermining democracy" in the region. By April 2026, the administration had sharpened the framing: the restrictions now explicitly target individuals "who act on behalf of adversarial powers" to "undermine U.S. national interests," invoking the Monroe Doctrine ^[11].

Activities include but are not limited to: enabling adversarial powers to acquire or control key assets and strategic resources in our hemisphere; destabilising regional security efforts; undermining American economic interests; and conducting influence operations designed to undermine the sovereignty and stability of nations in our region. — United States Department of State

China's foreign ministry responded by naming the instrument more precisely than the administration ever would: the U.S. is "turning visas into political leverage" ^[11].

President Trump’s National Security Strategy makes clear: this Administration will deny adversarial powers the ability to own or control vital assets or threaten the security and prosperity of the United States in our region. — United States Department of State

The list goes on. In June, the State Department imposed visa bans on TPLF hardliners and their families in Ethiopia, explicitly framing the move as a tool to prevent reignition of the civil war ^[12]. The same month, the U.S. barred more than 100 additional Nicaraguan officials and their families over the death of indigenous leader Brooklyn Rivera in state custody, bringing the total barred Nicaraguans to more than 2,350 ^[13]. A Xinhua News Agency journalist had their visa revoked in direct retaliation for China's expulsion of a New York Times correspondent — tit-for-tat diplomatic leverage in a press-freedom dispute ^[14]. The U.S. threatened China with visa sanctions to force Beijing to accept repatriation of more than 100,000 undocumented Chinese nationals, bundling the demand with trade concessions ahead of a Trump-Xi summit ^[15]. And in April, the Board of Immigration Appeals ordered the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident, with Rubio charging that his presence had "potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences" — an explicit deployment of the immigration system against an individual for political speech ^[16].

I have committed no crime. I have broken no law. The only thing I am guilty of is speaking out against the genocide in Palestine—and this administration has weaponized the immigration system to punish me for it. — Mahmoud Khalil

Cuba shows the full arc. The administration imposed an oil blockade, escalating sanctions, and visa restrictions targeting named individuals — Díaz-Canel, his wife, his stepson, Raúl Castro's descendants — while pressuring Spanish hotel chains to cease business with sanctioned entities ^[17]. The pressure produced results: Cuba released 51 prisoners and signaled willingness to open its tourism and energy sectors to U.S. investment. Trump's own summary of the dynamic was characteristically blunt: "they want to make a deal so badly, you have no idea" ^[18].

I do believe I'll be having the honour of taking Cuba. — Donald Trump

It did not produce regime change — Díaz-Canel refused to resign — but the tool extracted concessions that broad economic sanctions alone had not achieved in decades. The legal architecture matters here. The broad-track measures — country-wide travel bans, processing freezes, asylum restrictions — are testable in court as discriminatory. A judge can look at a 39-country freeze and find it penalizes people "solely by the happenstance of their birth." The targeted track uses different legal instruments: INA Section 212(a)(3)(C), which allows the secretary of state to bar individuals whose entry would have "potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences," and IEEPA, which authorizes asset freezes and visa bans against named individuals on national-security grounds. Courts have historically deferred to the executive on such determinations. That is why the ICC judges can sue — and lose on the merits of the national-security claim — while the 39-country freeze gets blocked in a single hearing. The result is a divergence that is likely to widen. The broad track is contracting under judicial scrutiny: each new injunction narrows the administration's room to maneuver, and the Supreme Court may eventually weigh in. The targeted track is expanding precisely because it was built to be harder to reach — and the administration has signaled it intends to keep building. The plan to expand Iranian elite revocations to 3,000 to 4,000 people is the next observable step. The list of barred Nicaraguans, now past 2,350, is still growing. And the Monroe Doctrine framing of the Western Hemisphere restrictions suggests the administration sees the hemisphere as a theater where the tool can be deployed at scale. One track is being dismantled in court. The other is just getting started.