If your compliance or trust and safety team includes a non-citizen researcher, the State Department spent the last year building a case to deport them for doing their job. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg blocked it in a July 14 order.
The policy started as a visa restriction targeting foreign nationals accused of “censoring Americans,” announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Per Boasberg’s opinion, it expanded into consular guidance to scrutinize visa applicants working in misinformation research, fact-checking, content moderation, and compliance, five researchers named outright. The State Department never proved any of them worked for a foreign government trying to censor Americans.
That’s the part that should worry every compliance officer hiring internationally: the rule didn’t require proof of foreign influence, just proof you work in the field. Boasberg said the policy had no “clear stopping point short of the content moderation field itself.” He granted a preliminary injunction covering the whole industry, not just the five named researchers or Coalition for Independent Technology Research members who sued, because Rubio had publicly threatened to expand the list.
For founders running trust and safety or compliance teams with green-card or visa-holding staff, here’s the read: the injunction is preliminary. Rubio can appeal. If you’re sponsoring visas for compliance hires this quarter, loop in outside immigration counsel before you file the paperwork.
— Nathan Zakhary