India, Aug. 23 -- A federal judge has struck down a Trump administration policy that suspended the issuing of immigrant visas to citizens of 75 countries, ruling on Friday that the measure unlawfully discriminated against applicants purely on the basis of their nationality.

District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas of the Southern District of New York vacated the ban entirely, along with any visa denials that had been issued solely because of the policy, restoring the possibility of case-by-case review for thousands of applicants whose applications had been frozen since the start of the year.

The US State Department had announced in January that it was halting immigrant visas for citizens of Afghanistan, Brazil, Yemen and dozens of other natio...