Coalition for Independent Technology Research v. Rubio

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COALITION FOR INDEPENDENT TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH, Plaintiff, v. Civil Action No. 26-815 (JEB) MARCO RUBIO, et al., Defendants. MEMORANDUM OPINION The town square of yesteryear has moved online. Where public debate once played out on street corners and in the daily papers, on soapboxes and the evening news, it now unfolds in large part on a handful of internet platforms owned and operated by private entities. Behind the posts, feeds, labels, and takedowns that shape what users see is a sprawling ecosystem of platforms, researchers, fact checkers, advocates, and trust-and-safety professionals. Some study how false or harmful content spreads, others press platforms to change their rules, and still others help users respond to online abuse. To one side of a heated public debate, that work makes digital discourse safer and more accountable. To the other, it is censorship by another name. The State Department has now placed immigration consequences behind that latter view. In 2025, the Secretary announced a policy targeting foreign nationals said to be complicit in censoring Americans. 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 Department has since invoked that policy to bar 1 individuals from the country or seek their removal, including leaders of CITR member organizations. In response, CITR has brought this action, and it now seeks both a preliminary injunction and a stay of the policy. It contends that the policy chills its members’ research, advocacy, travel, and association and, in turn, impairs CITR’s own reporting, convening, and public-facing work. The Court concludes that Plaintiff has shown a likelihood that the policy is reviewable and that it burdens protected speech and association on the basis of viewpoint, in violation of the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act. As the remaining preliminary-relief factors also favor Plaintiff, the Court will grant a stay of the policy under 5 U.S.C. § 705. I. Background A. Statutory Framework Two provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act set the table. The first governs entry. A noncitizen is inadmissible if the Secretary of State has “reasonable ground to believe” that the individual’s “entry or proposed activities in the United States . . . would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(C)(i). That broad authority is not without limitations. A noncitizen “shall not be excludable or subject to restrictions or conditions on entry into the United States” based on that individual’s “past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States.” Id., § 1182(a)(3)(C)(iii). That hedge, however, has limitations of its own. The Secretary may exclude noncitizens based on protected “beliefs, statements, or associations” if he “personally determines that the alien’s admission would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.” Id. Should he so determine, the Secretary “must notify on a timely basis” the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs 2 Committees of the House and the Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committees of the Senate, identifying the noncitizen and the justification for his exclusion. Id., § 1182(a)(3)(C)(iv). The second provision concerns removal. A noncitizen already in the country “is deportable” on much the same showing as what governs admission: the Secretary of State determines that the noncitizen’s “presence or activities . . . would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” Id., § 1227(a)(4)(C)(i). As with inadmissibility, the deportation provision shields noncitizens from removal based on lawful beliefs, statements, or associations. Id., § 1227(a)(4)(C)(ii) (incorporating id., § 1182(a)(3)(C)(iii)). The Secretary, once more, may override that protection by making an individualized determination that the noncitizen’s presence compromises a compelling foreign- policy interest. Id. B. Factual Background 1. Content Moderation Online platforms now carry an outsized share of our political arguments, exchange of critical news, and commerce, as well as much of our private conversations. This migration away from traditional forms of media has recast a timeless question: how, and by whom, should the bounds of public debate be drawn? No online platform desires to host all that its users might post, and so each must decide what to carry and what to refuse. Those decisions are not made once but continuously, across millions of messages, images, and videos that are uploaded each day. A platform may let a post stand, it may bury it far down a feed, it may attach a label cautioning that claims are unverified or conjured by artificial intelligence, or it may take down a post altogether. 3  Meta, for example, stepped back from centralized enforcement by swapping “third-party fact checking” in the United States for reader-written “Community Notes” and trimming speech- restriction rules. See More Speech and Fewer Mistakes, Meta (Jan. 7, 2025), https://perma.cc/U5ZZ-U8JQ. X takes a more permissive approach, letting even graphic media stand so long as it is labeled and not prominently displayed. See The X Rules, X, https://perma.cc/LL2U-LY6D. Bluesky declines the role of sole arbiter altogether, setting a baseline and then letting users subscribe to independent, stackable “labeling” services that decide much of what each person sees hidden, blurred, or flagged. See Bluesky’s Stackable Approach to Moderation, Bluesky (Mar. 12, 2024), https://perma.cc/PVY5-PWWM. This never-ending determination about what information a service will carry, and on what terms, is the essence of content moderation. While such practice is easy to describe, it is anything but settled. Public debate over the subject is active and divided. See, e.g., Christopher St. Aubin & Jacob Liedke, Most Americans Favor Restrictions on False Information, Violent Content Online, Pew Rsch. Ctr. (July 20, 2023), https://perma.cc/VSQ3-RHFA (reporting growing “partisan gap in support for restricting false information”). To one camp, the platforms moderate far too much, suppressing lawful speech or disfavored political speech under the banner of combating falsehood and hate. To another, they moderate too little, letting lies, harassment, and incitement spread and harden into real-world harm. The core of the dispute is whether a platform’s decision to bury or delete a post is the responsible tending of the town square or the heavy-handed silencing of a view. One person’s content moderation, in the end, is another’s censorship. The debate is not merely philosophical. An early marker came in 2020. After a platform appended a fact check to a post by the President addressing mail-in voting, he issued an 4 executive order condemning platforms’ “selective censorship” and directing agencies such as the Department of Justice to “review the viewpoint-based speech restrictions imposed by” those platforms. See Exec. Order No. 13925, 85 Fed. Reg. 34079, 34079, 34081 (June 2, 2020). With a change in administrations in 2021, the effort passed largely to Congress, whose sights moved from the platforms to the researchers who studied them. A House subcommittee, for instance, subpoenaed the Stanford Internet Observatory — a university program devoted to the study of disinformation — on the theory that its research was itself “the censorship of disfavored speech.” Press Release, H. Comm. on the Judiciary, Chairman Jordan Presses Stanford on Subpoena Compliance for Censorship Investigation (June 1, 2023), https://perma.cc/99VS-KSYN. Under the weight of that inquiry, broad document demands, and private litigation, the Observatory lost its funding and leadership and ultimately wound down. See Joseph Menn, Stanford’s Top Disinformation Research Group Collapses Under Pressure, Wash. Post (June 14, 2024), https://perma.cc/G3RE-B7Y4. The subcommittee did not stop there, pressing similar demands on other researchers and advocacy organizations, among them members of CITR, and reaching even to regulators abroad. See ECF No. 1 (Compl.), ¶ 33. Returning to office in 2025, President Trump once again turned his attention to the matter. An executive order issued in January of that year declared it the policy of the United States to end “censorship” and recast the prior administration’s efforts to “combat[] ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation’” as attempts to pressure platforms “to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech.” Exec. Order No. 14149, 90 Fed. Reg. 8243, 8243 (Jan. 28, 2025). A related order issued the same month directed the Secretary of State, Attorney General, Secretary of Homeland Security, and Director of National Intelligence to “[r]ecommend any actions necessary to protect the American people from the actions of 5 foreign nationals who have undermined or seek to undermine the fundamental constitutional rights of the American people, including, but not limited to, our Citizens’ rights to freedom of speech.” Exec. Order No. 14161, 90 Fed. Reg. 8451, 8452 (Jan. 30, 2025). 2. The Policy Secretary of State Marco Rubio took up the invitation. On May 28, 2025, he announced “a new visa restriction policy that will apply to foreign officials who are responsible for censorship of protected expression in the United States.” Press Release, U.S. Dep’t of State, Announcement of a Visa Restriction Policy Targeting Foreign Nationals Who Censor Americans (May 28, 2025), https://perma.cc/3PBU-J257 (May 28 Press Release). An internal memorandum approved five days earlier set the groundwork for the policy, invoking the inadmissibility grounds of 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(C) and citing the need “to secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech.” ECF No. 45-2 (May Mem.) at ECF pp. 1–2. The policy authorized the State Department to “restrict visa issuance” not only for “foreign nationals who are responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression” but also for “the immediate family members of such persons.” Id. at ECF p. 1. Examples offered for being “responsible for, or complicit in, censorship” included the following: “threatening arrest for activity on American tech platforms,” fining platforms, detaining platforms’ employees “for not complying with . . . content moderation or censorship demands,” and demanding access to private user data to ensure compliance with content moderation policies. Id. at ECF p. 2. The Department first put the policy to use abroad in July 2025. Casting Brazilian proceedings against former President Jair Bolsonaro as a “political witch hunt” that “created a persecution and censorship complex,” it revoked the visas of a justice of Brazil’s Supreme 6 Federal Court along with those of several of his colleagues and family members. See Press Release, U.S. Dep’t of State, Announcement of Visa Restrictions on Brazilian Judicial Officials and Their Immediate Family Members (July 18, 2025), https://perma.cc/3WWN-LCSB. The policy’s reach widened that December. An internal cable — reported in the press and acknowledged by the Government, though never released — invoked the May policy to establish new criteria for H-1B visas typically used by tech companies. See ECF Nos. 11-15 (NPR Article) at ECF pp. 2–4; 50 (Hr’g Tr.) at 22:21–24. As part of those criteria, consular officers were instructed to “thoroughly explore” applicants’ “work histories,” “resumes, LinkedIn profiles,” and media appearances for involvement in “combatting misinformation, disinformation or false narratives, fact-checking, content moderation, compliance, and trust and safety,” and, upon discovering such involvement, to “pursue a finding that the applicant is ineligible for a visa.” NPR Article at ECF pp. 3–4 (quotation marks omitted). Enforcement actions that followed the May policy went a step beyond holding the line at the border. The catalyst came from abroad: on December 5, the European Commission fined the platform X roughly $140 million under the Digital Services Act for breaching platform- transparency rules, see ECF No. 11-21 (EU Fine Announcement) at ECF pp. 2–3, a penalty the Secretary deemed “an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people.” ECF No. 11-22 (Rubio X Post of Dec. 5, 2025). As a response, Under Secretary Sarah B. Rogers sent the Secretary an action memorandum recommending that, “[c]onsistent with those foreign policy objectives articulated in the May 2025 3C policy,” the Secretary find two lawful permanent residents deportable. See ECF No. 11-23 (Dec. Action Mem.) at 2, 5–6. On December 19, the Secretary did so as to Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate 7 (CCDH), determining “based on the same foreign policy objectives articulated in [the] May announcement” that Ahmed was deportable under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(4)(C). Id. at 7. Four days later, the Secretary announced action against five individuals he described as having “led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.” ECF No. 11-24 (Enforcement Action Press Release) at ECF p. 2. He barred all five from the country, noted that the Department of Homeland Security could begin removal proceedings as needed on the strength of his determinations, and warned that the Department “stands ready and willing to expand” the list. Id. What the five had in common was not office or authority but work in the space of content moderation. Thierry Breton, a former European Commissioner, was named for a letter he had sent X owner Elon Musk in 2024, warning that the platform would face penalties under European law if it did not curb illegal content. See Compl., ¶ 56. Ahmed was named for CCDH’s research documenting hate and disinformation on the platforms and its campaigns pressing advertisers and the platforms to act on what it found. Id., ¶ 57. Clare Melford was named for the work of the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which at the time published “disinformation risk ratings” for news and information sites. Id., ¶ 58. And Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg were named for their work at HateAid, a German nonprofit that helps targets of online abuse seek removal of, and legal redress for, the content aimed at them. Id., ¶¶ 59–60. Ahmed — who was living in the United States as a lawful permanent resident — received no advance notice of his deportability determination but secured a temporary restraining order against his detention in a separate suit. See Ahmed v. Rubio, No. 25-10705, ECF No. 14 (Order) (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 25, 2025). 8  The Department was not finished. Weeks later, in its 2026–2030 strategic plan, it pledged to counter such “censorship” of Americans “through all appropriate means including visa and financial sanctions.” Compl., ¶ 63. 3. The Coalition for Independent Technology Research CITR is a nonprofit membership organization formed in 2022 after Meta demanded that two New York University researchers abandon their study of how disinformation spreads on its service. Id., ¶ 122. Its mission is to “advance, sustain, and defend the right to ethically study the impact of technology on society,” free of the “obstruction, interference, and cooption” of governments and platforms alike. Id.; ECF No. 11-2 (Declaration of Brandi Geurkink), ¶ 4. Two programs carry out that mission. Through “Community,” CITR builds and sustains a network of support for researchers, fact checkers, and others working in the field, connecting them across institutions and borders, convening them at workshops and a yearly summit, and giving them the peer relationships and shared resources the work depends on. See Compl., ¶ 124. Through “Advocacy,” it conducts public-education campaigns and publishes its own research, including reports on the state of independent technology research. Id., ¶¶ 125, 135. To date, CITR counts roughly 500 individual and organizational members across 47 countries. Id., ¶ 123. For CITR and its members, the policy looms large. The enforcement actions against Ahmed and Melford are the first illustration: each leads an organization — CCDH and GDI respectively — that is a member of CITR. Id., ¶¶ 57–58. But the two are not alone in their exposure. CITR’s members are researchers, fact checkers, and advocates whose work focuses on “misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, and trust and safety issues” — in other words, the content moderation that others see as censorship. Id., ¶ 66. 9  That reach has reshaped the Coalition and the work of its members alike. Fearing that travel to or from the United States will draw scrutiny, some of CITR’s noncitizen members have narrowed their research, declined to speak publicly or attend conferences, and pulled back from the Coalition’s work; a few have made plans to leave the country altogether. Id., ¶¶ 9, 65. CITR itself has suspended its in-person events in the United States, planned an additional 2026 summit at considerable cost to protect international members, watched members withhold their contributions from its own reporting, and diverted staff from its initiatives to answer members’ fears about the policy. See Geurkink Decl., ¶¶ 15–33; Compl., ¶¶ 128, 130, 135–136, 138. Nor have the effects stopped at the noncitizens the policy targets; CITR’s U.S.-citizen members have felt it, too, as the colleagues and collaborators they depend on retreat from shared work. See Compl., ¶¶ 108–20. C. Procedural Background Plaintiff filed this action on March 9, 2026, against Rubio, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and then-Attorney General Pamela Bondi in their official capacities. Id., ¶¶ 16–18. The Complaint pleads three counts. First, CITR alleges that State’s policy contravenes the First Amendment by discriminating against viewpoints the Government has come to disfavor and that Defendants’ threats to strip visas and pursue removal for protected work amount to an impermissible campaign of coercion. Id., ¶¶ 139–41. Second, the organization contends that the policy is void for vagueness under the Fifth Amendment. Id., ¶¶ 142–45. Finally, CITR asserts that the policy violates the Administrative Procedure Act as agency action that is contrary to constitutional right, arbitrary and capricious, and in excess of the Secretary’s authority under the INA. Id., ¶¶ 146–48. 10  Later that month, CITR moved to stay the policy under 5 U.S.C. § 705 and to preliminarily enjoin Defendants from enforcing it during the pendency of this litigation. See ECF No. 11-1 (Pl. Mot.). The Court heard oral argument on the opposed Motion, see ECF No. 45 (Opp.), on May 13. See Minute Entry of May 13, 2026. II. Legal Standard Requests for relief under 5 U.S.C. § 705 are evaluated under the same standards as requests for preliminary injunctions. Cuomo v. NRC, 772 F.2d 972, 974 (D.C. Cir. 1985). Although the two remedies differ in operation — with an injunction commanding a party and a stay suspending the agency action itself — the inquiry that precedes them does not. See Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 428–29 (2009). “A preliminary injunction is an extraordinary remedy never awarded as of right.” Winter v. NRDC, 555 U.S. 7, 24 (2008). “A plaintiff seeking a preliminary injunction must establish [1] that he is likely to succeed on the merits, [2] that he is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief, [3] that the balance of equities tips in his favor, and [4] that an injunction is in the public interest.” Sherley v. Sebelius, 644 F.3d 388, 392 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (alterations in original) (quoting Winter, 555 U.S. at 20). “[I]f the government is the opposing party,” the latter two factors “merge.” Glob. Health Council v. Trump, 153 F.4th 1, 12 (D.C. Cir. 2025). “The moving party bears the burden of persuasion and must demonstrate, ‘by a clear showing,’ that the requested relief is warranted.” Hosp. Staffing Sols., LLC v. Reyes, 736 F. Supp. 2d 192, 197 (D.D.C. 2010) (quoting Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches v. England, 454 F.3d 290, 297 (D.C. Cir. 2006)). A court “may deny a motion for preliminary injunction, without further inquiry, upon finding that a plaintiff is unable to show either irreparable injury or 11 a likelihood of success on the merits,” making those two factors “particularly crucial.” Luokung Tech. Corp. v. Dep’t of Def., 538 F. Supp. 3d 174, 182 (D.D.C. 2021) (emphasis in original) (quotation marks omitted). III. Analysis The Court addresses each of the four preliminary-injunction factors in turn, devoting the bulk of its attention to CITR’s likelihood of success on the merits. A. Likelihood of Success on Merits The likelihood-of-success inquiry here presents not one question but several, and their order matters, for each turns in part on the answers that precede it. The Court begins with the nature of the policy CITR challenges — whether it is the unified course of agency conduct CITR describes or the visa-only measure severed from any determination of removal. It then takes up the two threshold barriers the Government raises before the merits: CITR’s standing to sue and a set of jurisdictional bars in the INA that Defendants believe forecloses review of the policy and the relief CITR seeks. After clearing all of this substantial brush, the Court reaches the merits of CITR’s claims under the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act. As those suffice to establish a likelihood of success, it need not address CITR’s Fifth Amendment vagueness claim. 1. Nature of Policy The parties’ first disagreement is not about standing, jurisdiction, or the merits, but rather the object to which all three attach: the policy itself. CITR contends that it has challenged a single, unified course of agency conduct that both threatens noncitizens’ visas and renders them deportable for research and advocacy efforts that are branded as censorship. See Pl. Mot. at 4–9. Defendants rejoin that there is no such unified policy, but only a narrow visa-restriction measure 12 set out in May 2025, accompanied by separate and individualized removal determinations. See Opp. at 3–6. Severed that way, the Government’s conduct would present not a policy but a set of individualized decisions, the kind channeled elsewhere and heavily deferred to. As the resolution of this debate shapes much of what follows, the Court takes it up first. The State Department indisputably announced a visa-restriction policy under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(C) in May 2025. See May 28 Press Release. The question, then, is whether it later applied that announced policy to a wider set of individuals engaged in content moderation, or whether those December actions were separate and unconnected measures. The answer lies principally in how the Department itself described the December actions. Those contemporaneous descriptions are not conclusive merely because the Department offered them, see Gen. Motors Corp. v. Ruckelshaus, 742 F.2d 1561, 1564–65 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (en banc), but they are probative of whether officials responsible for the December actions understood themselves at the time to be implementing the May policy. Cf. Williams Gas Processing — Gulf Coast Co. v. FERC, 373 F.3d 1335, 1345 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (agency action is measured by “reasoning that is fairly stated by the agency” at the time, not “post hoc rationalizations by agency counsel”) (citation omitted). The May Memo, approved on May 23, 2025, and announced five days later, invokes the inadmissibility ground of 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(C) and authorizes the Department to “restrict visa issuance for foreign nationals who are responsible for, or complicit in,” censorship of protected expression, together with their immediate family members. See May Mem. at ECF p. 1. The Court accepts that the memorandum, read in isolation and by its own terms, concerns visa issuance rather than the removal of noncitizens already here. CITR does not contend otherwise, having acknowledged that the May Memo, standing alone, “appear[s] to be restricted to visa 13 issuance.” Hr’g Tr. at 7:8–10. Yet that concession yields Defendants far less than they suppose. CITR has never claimed that the May Memo exhausts the policy’s scope. It instead asserts that the Department expanded and applied the announced policy through its December actions — directing consular officers to deny visas to those engaged in content-moderation work, and then deploying the same policy to “render deportable” noncitizens already here for that same protected activity. See Pl. Mot. at 6–8; ECF No. 48 (Pl. Reply) at 3–4. The record makes the connection plain. The first link is the cable, reportedly transmitted to consular officers on December 2, which invoked the May policy and directed officers to scrutinize visa applicants for involvement in “combatting misinformation, disinformation or false narratives, fact-checking, content moderation, compliance, and trust and safety.” NPR Article at ECF p. 4. Such individuals were to be found “responsible for, or complicit in, censorship” and denied visas. Id. at ECF p. 3. The second link is the removal determination of December 19, by which the Secretary found Imran Ahmed deportable under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(4)(C) on the same foreign-policy ground articulated in the May Memo. See Dec. Action Mem. at 5–6. That the removal side of this course of conduct belongs to the same policy as the visa side is established, in the end, by the Government’s own words. A deportability determination under § 1227(a)(4)(C) must rest on the Secretary’s determination that the noncitizen’s presence or activities would have potentially serious adverse foreign-policy consequences for the United States. See supra Section I.A. For Imran Ahmed’s deportation, the Secretary grounded that finding in the May policy. The December Action Memo stated that the deportability determination was “[c]onsistent with those foreign policy objectives articulated in the May 2025 3C policy.” Dec. Action Mem. at 5. In a subsequent memorandum to then-Secretary Noem recommending Ahmed’s removal, Secretary Rubio explained that the determination was “based 14 on the same foreign policy objectives articulated in [the] May announcement of a policy to restrict visa issuance under INA section 212(a)(3)(C).” Id. at 7. Before Congress, Under Secretary Rogers identified Ahmed as “one of the targets of our recent 3C sanctions policy.” ECF No. 48-1 (Supplemental Declaration of Carrie DeCell), ¶ 6. And a December 23 series of public posts announced inadmissibility findings, visa restrictions, and deportability determinations together as enforcement of a single campaign against censorship. See Enforcement Action Press Release; ECF Nos. 11-25–30 (Rubio & Rogers X Posts). These are not the descriptions of an enforcement action that stands apart from the policy; they are the descriptions of an enforcement action that carries the policy forward. Pressed at oral argument to reconcile this language with the severance it urges, Defendants’ counsel could say only that although the determination is “based on the same objectives,” it was nonetheless “not based on the policy itself.” Hr’g Tr. at 23:9–15. That is a distinction without a difference. A shared objective, without more, might not establish a unified policy. Here, however, the responsible officials invoked the May policy by name, applied its central substantive criteria, identified Ahmed as one of its targets, and announced the visa and removal actions together. Defendants offer no persuasive explanation for those repeated connections if the Ahmed determination was, as they now maintain, wholly freestanding. The Government resists this conclusion principally on the ground that the Ahmed deportation was made on an “individualized” basis under the Secretary’s discretionary authority. See Opp. at 5, 25. In their telling, that determination stands apart from the policy, which they describe as a measure concerned only with visa restrictions. Id. at 4–5, 25. The individualized character of the determination, however, cannot be what places removal outside the policy because the visa restrictions the Government concedes implement the policy also rest on 15 individualized determinations. The inadmissibility provision, no less than the deportability provision, conditions the exclusion of a noncitizen for protected “beliefs, statements, or associations” on the Secretary’s “personal[]” determination that the noncitizen’s admission “would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.” 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(C)(iii). The deportability provision incorporates that requirement by direct reference. Id., § 1227(a)(4)(C)(ii). Congress thus yoked the two grounds to the same standard, making an individualized, personal determination by the Secretary the predicate of exclusion and removal alike. If the need for such a determination placed the removal action outside the policy, it would equally place outside the policy the visa restrictions the Government concedes make up the policy. At this stage, then, the challenged conduct is best understood not as a visa policy trailed by unrelated removal decisions, but as a single policy aimed at noncitizens the Department deems complicit in censorship, pursued through two mechanisms: visa denial for those seeking admission and removal of those already here. Indeed, the deportability ground borrows the inadmissibility ground’s substantive criteria by direct reference, and the Department’s own documents tie both to the same announced objective. 2. Standing With the challenged policy thus defined, the Court turns to Defendants’ threshold objection that CITR lacks standing to bring the suit. They contend that the policy neither regulates the Coalition itself nor directly interferes with its core activities, and that any injury to CITR depends instead on the voluntary choices of its members and other noncitizens. See Opp. at 15–18. CITR, for its part, offers several routes to standing — associational through its citizen and noncitizen members, and organizational in its own right. See Pl. Mot. at 13–27; see also Ctr. 16 for Responsible Sci. v. Gottlieb, 346 F. Supp. 3d 29, 36 (D.D.C. 2018) (delineating organizational and associational standing). The Court need travel only one. Because Plaintiff has shown an injury to its own organizational activities, the Court finds standing on that ground and does not reach the associational theories. See Ctr. for Biological Diversity v. EPA, 56 F.4th 55, 69 (D.C. Cir. 2022) (declining to address organizational standing after finding associational standing). The constitutional minimum is settled. To have standing, a plaintiff must show that she “(1) suffered an injury in fact, (2) that is fairly traceable to the challenged conduct of the defendant, and (3) that is likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial decision.” Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330, 338 (2016). CITR has established each. a. Organizational Injury in Fact To establish an injury in fact of its own, an organization must satisfy the two-part test set forth by the Circuit. The Court first asks “whether the agency’s action or omission to act injured the [organization’s] interest” and then “whether the organization used its resources to counteract that harm.” PETA v. USDA, 797 F.3d 1087, 1094 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (quotation marks and citation omitted). Under the first prong, the challenged conduct must “perceptibly impair[] the organization’s ability to provide services,” Food & Water Watch, Inc. v. Vilsack, 808 F.3d 905, 919 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (quoting Turlock Irrigation Dist. v. FERC, 786 F.3d 18, 24 (D.C. Cir. 2015)), “inhibit[]” its “daily operations,” PETA, 797 F.3d at 1094 (quotation marks and citation omitted), or “ma[k]e the organization’s activities more difficult.” Nat’l Treasury Emps. Union v. United States, 101 F.3d 1423, 1430 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (emphasis omitted). The second prong is met where the organization “undertook the expenditures in response to, and to counteract, the 17 effects of the defendant’s [challenged conduct] rather than in anticipation of litigation.” Equal Rts. Ctr. v. Post Props., Inc., 633 F.3d 1136, 1140 (D.C. Cir. 2011). CITR finds success on both fronts, and the reason starts with what the policy targets. The Coalition exists to convene, sustain, and build the field of independent technology researchers — those who analyze public data, report on disinformation, and press technology platforms over content moderation to mitigate user harm. See Geurkink Decl., ¶¶ 4–9. The policy renders the people who do that work subject to visa revocation, exclusion, and deportation, and it has already been deployed against the leaders of two CITR organizational members. See Dec. Action Mem. at 5–6; Compl., ¶¶ 57–58. An organization whose purpose is to hold such a community together does not stand at a remove from a policy that takes the community as its object; the impairment reaches the substance of what CITR does. The record bears that out across its operations. Begin with CITR’s reporting and public-facing research. Since the policy’s enforcement, noncitizen members have declined to attach their names to CITR’s own State of Independent Tech Research Report, and the Coalition has been unable to find members willing to speak publicly either about their work or the effects of the policy on independent technology research. See Geurkink Decl., ¶ 28. That is not merely a diminished appetite for advocacy. It is the degradation of a concrete organizational work product: CITR cannot research, publish, and publicize as its operations require when the contributors that such work depends upon go silent. CITR’s convening function has fared no better. It ordinarily holds one or two events a month and an annual summit drawing its global membership, the means by which it gives researchers room to collaborate and to confront the threats they share. Id., ¶ 8. The policy has hollowed that function out. U.S.-based noncitizen members declined to attend the 2025 summit in Berlin for fear of being denied reentry, thinning participation and hampering CITR’s ability to 18 coordinate work across its membership. Id., ¶ 19. CITR has suspended its U.S.-based events altogether, unable to hold the inclusive, cross-border gatherings that are their whole purpose while the policy deters attendance. Id., ¶¶ 16–18. And since the December enforcement, members have grown unwilling to take part candidly even in the events that go forward: many no longer sign in, no longer document their work as a group, and decline to share what they know with anyone not in attendance. Id., ¶ 21. Members have withdrawn as well from public association with CITR itself. Several — among them an individual identified as Member C — have asked that their names come off CITR’s website and have stopped attending meetings, telling Coalition leadership that association no longer feels safe once leaders of member organizations have themselves become targets. Id., ¶ 24. That severs the very tie between organization and member that CITR exists to maintain, and it reflects “a direct conflict between [Defendants’] conduct and the organization’s mission.” Elec. Priv. Info. Ctr. v. FAA, 892 F.3d 1249, 1255 (D.C. Cir. 2018) (emphasis omitted) (quoting Nat’l Treasury Emps. Union, 101 F.3d at 1430). Defendants reduce this all to a dip in event attendance — no more than “ipse dixit anxiety.” Opp. at 16–17 (citing Already, LLC v. Nike, Inc., 568 U.S. 85, 97 (2013)). Yet that framing reduces a broad operational injury to a triviality it does not resemble. The participation CITR has lost — contributions to its reports, voices to the press, public association under its banner, candor at its convenings — is the participation on which its reporting and convening depend, and its loss is an injury to what the organization does, not a complaint about what its members would prefer. Nor does that withdrawal rest on unfounded fear. Defendants insist that CITR cannot show that its members are targeted, making any chill “subjective” and insufficient under Clapper 19 v. Amnesty International USA, 568 U.S. 398 (2013). See Opp. at 13–14, 17–18. That, however, ignores that the policy has already been enforced against the leaders of two CITR member organizations, and Defendants have announced that the Department “stands ready and willing to expand” its list of targets. See ECF No. 11-28 (Melford Sanction X Post); Dec. Action Mem. at 5–6; Enforcement Action Press Release at ECF p. 2. In other words, members who do the same work as those already sanctioned need not speculate when they face the same fate, and their withdrawal from the Coalition’s work is the foreseeable result. Having shown both that its operations are impaired and that the threat driving that impairment is real and not conjectural, CITR clears the first prong. The second is likewise satisfied, as Plaintiff has expended resources to counteract these harms and preserve operations. To keep its members together as best it can, CITR has split its annual summit into two parallel gatherings — one abroad and one in the United States — so that no members need travel internationally and place themselves at risk. See Geurkink Decl., ¶ 20. That arrangement creates two separate cost structures and will charge the organization tens of thousands of dollars that otherwise would