Authored by Owen Evans via The Epoch Times,
A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a policy that denied visas and ordered deportations of “disinformation” expert foreign nationals whom it accused of being leading figures in the global “censorship-industrial complex.”
Last year, the United States issued a visa policy targeting foreign nationals whom it claimed censor Americans’ free speech abroad.
“For too long, Americans have been fined, harassed, and even charged by foreign authorities for exercising their free speech rights,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X at the time.
In Washington on July 14, Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg sided with the Coalition for Independent Technology Research (CITR) in finding that the administration’s policy likely “burdens” the speech of noncitizen researchers in the United States in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.
The group’s lawsuit alleged that the U.S. State Department had been engaged in a campaign of censorship against anti-disinformation advocates.
“What began as a visa-restriction policy later expanded, according to plaintiff Coalition for Independent Technology Research, into a broader campaign against noncitizen
