Afghanistan Peace Campaign
A US federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration unlawfully applied its Afghan travel restrictions to the spouses and children of seven Afghan nationals who were granted asylum in the United States, a decision that could allow the affected families to move forward with reunification.
US District Judge Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia ruled in a case brought by seven Afghan families whose asylum status in the United States had been approved and whose spouses or children had also received approval through the I-730 follow-to-join process. Court records show that all of the relevant I-730 petitions had been approved by US Citizenship and Immigration Services before the State Department applied the travel restrictions to the family members.
The case challenges the application of Presidential Proclamations 10949 and 10998, which restrict the entry of Afghan nationals into the United States. Both proclamations contain language stating that they do not apply to people granted asylum and do not limit an individual’s ability to seek asylum.
Judge Trenga previously rejected the government’s attempt to dismiss the lawsuit. In a May 2026 ruling, he found that the State Department’s blanket application of the proclamations to the Afghan families was subject to judicial review and that the derivative family members were clearly seeking asylum.
The court said the State Department had effectively adopted a categorical policy rather than making individualized decisions in the families’ cases. The judge also found that the plaintiffs had plausibly established procedural due-process claims related to the legally established follow-to-join asylum process.
Under the I-730 process, people granted asylum in the United States may petition for their spouses and unmarried children under 21 to join them. In this case, the approved petitions had been transferred for consular processing, but some relatives were denied or delayed at the final stage after the government invoked the travel restrictions.
The ruling is significant because it addresses a specific category of Afghan families whose reunification cases had already progressed through the US immigration system. It does not overturn the broader travel restrictions on Afghan nationals. Proclamation 10998, which took effect in January 2026, continued the suspension of entry for Afghan nationals and removed some categorical exceptions that had existed under the earlier proclamation.
The case also highlights the tension between the Trump administration’s national-security-based entry restrictions and protections contained in US asylum and immigration law. The administration has defended the restrictions as necessary for national security, while the Afghan families argued that applying them categorically to approved derivative-asylum cases undermined the family-reunification process.
For the affected families, the decision could provide a route toward completing cases that had been stalled after years of separation. The court’s reasoning may also influence how US agencies handle other Afghan follow-to-join cases affected by the travel restrictions.
The broader impact, however, will depend on how the State Department implements the ruling and whether the government appeals or seeks further legal review. The case therefore remains important for Afghan families separated by US immigration restrictions, even though the decision is limited to the claims and circumstances before the court.