Judge freezes travel ban on foreign misinformation researchers

WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal judge froze a State Department policy Tuesday that placed a travel ban on individuals combatting disinformation and hate speech on social media platforms, finding it amounted to wrongful viewpoint discrimination.

Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg sided with the Coalition for Independent Technology Research and granted a preliminary injunction staying the policy that had already resulted in the deportation of several leaders from the organization.

“What began as a visa-restriction policy later expanded, according to plaintiff Coalition for Independent Technology Research, into a broader campaign against noncitizens who work on misinformation, disinformation, fact checking, content moderation, compliance and trust and safety,” the Barack Obama appointee wrote in the 58-page opinion. “The Department has since invoked that policy to bar individuals from the country or seek their removal, including leaders of CITR member organizations.”

Boasberg found the policy clearly violates the First Amendment because the government has used it not only to target individuals who use sovereign authority to suppress protected speech in the United States but also to target private researchers, advocates, nonprofit leaders and trust and safety professionals whose asserted “censorship” merely includes disinformation research.

Boasberg said the policy “sweeps into the category of ‘foreign censorship’ a substantial measure of the research, reporting, advocacy and association through which CITR and institutions like it carry out their protected work, and it does so on the basis of viewpoint, in violation of the First Amendment.”

Tuesday’s ruling does not completely strike down the policy but freezes its enforcement as the litigation continues to move forward.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio first announced the visa restriction policy on May 28, 2025, targeting “foreign officials who are responsible for censorship of protected expression in the United States” and citing the need “to secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech.”

The State Department first used the policy in July 2025, revoking the visas of a Brazilian Supreme Court justice for the high court’s 27-year sentence for former President Jair Bolsonaro regarding his attempted coup after his political defeat in 2022, which largely mirrored President Donald Trump’s efforts in 2020.

On Dec. 23, the State Department announced it would exclude or deport five individuals under the policy, including two leaders of the coalition’s member organizations. Rubio added at the time that the “State Department stands ready and willing to expand” the list of targets if others “do not reverse course.”

“The record shows that the message landed,” Boasberg said of Rubio’s warning, noting one of the group’s members currently in the U.S. had avoided traveling to the coalition’s 2025 summit in Berlin for fear of being denied reentry and has pivoted to a behind-the-scenes role over fear of detention and deportation.

In its March 9 lawsuit, the coalition highlighted parallels between Rubio’s warning and the Trump administration’s wider mass deportation campaign, where several individuals have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for their pro-Palestinian advocacy, such as Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, both of whom initially avoided deportation thanks to court intervention.

As a result of Rubio’s action, the coalition said several of their noncitizen members who live in the United States have stopped working on research projects, stopped speaking publicly about their work, declined invitations to conferences and limited or ended public engagement with the coalition.

Others had planned to leave the country in response, all of which have significantly harmed the coalition’s interests and those of its American members.

Brandi Geurkink, executive director of the coalition, welcomed the ruling in a statement and said it would prevent the government from “using immigration threats to intimidate and censor independent researchers.”

“Researchers who work independently from the technology industry provide a much-needed window into the real impacts of these products on our lives and in our communities, and this policy has had a deep chilling effect on their work,” Geurkink said. “Our coalition will continue to fight for the right to research free from government censorship.”

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

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