New York, New York - A new lawsuit filed on Monday takes aim at the Trump administration's halt to immigrant visa processing for people from 75 countries.

On behalf of Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC), African, Communities Together, and individual plaintiffs, a group of civil and human rights organizations has sued the US Department of State and Secretary Marco Rubio over the policy.

"By promulgating the DOS Blanket Visa Ban, the Blanket Visa Ban Cable, and the Consular Processing Cable, DOS attempts to eviscerate decades of settled immigration law and practice with the stroke of a pen – stripping families of dignity, denying working people fair consideration, and supplanting Congress's carefully calibrated framework with its own unlawful regime," the complaint reads.

The visa ban – which took effect January 21 – replaces individualized assessments for people from the impacted countries with a processing regime based solely on nationality. The State Department sought to justify the move by claiming that immigrants from those countries pose a higher risk of becoming "public charges."

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"The vast majority of immigrants, including from the 75 countries, do not receive any type of welfare benefits, including SNAP benefits (which are not cash benefits relevant to public charge). Therefore, the assertion that nationals from these countries are 'high risk for becoming a public charge' is not only unsupported but incorrect," the lawsuit counters.

The plaintiffs argue the ban violates the Administrative Procedure Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the US Constitution's equal protection guarantee.

The Trump administration's sweeping visa ban has already started to separate families.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include a US citizen mother and grandmother in New York who is taking action on behalf of her four adult children and three grandchildren from Ghana. Though her relatives' petitions were approved and paid for, they were not able to receive their visas due to the ban.

Another plaintiff is a Long Island man whose wife and youngest child are now stuck in Guatemala and separated from him after traveling there for a scheduled consular interview.

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"This administration is trying to shut down lawful immigration from nearly half the countries in the world without legal authority or justification," CLINIC Executive Director Anna Gallagher said in a statement.

"We denounce this continued effort to scapegoat immigrants and disregard both the will of Congress and the inherent human dignity of those seeking safety, family unity, and opportunity."

Diana Konaté, deputy executive director of policy and advocacy at African Communities Together, said, "The 75-country visa ban is yet another unlawful and racist policy from the Trump administration that disproportionately harms Africans seeking to immigrate to the United States."

"Our immigration system already contains deeply embedded discrimination that makes obtaining a visa extraordinarily difficult for people across the African continent," Konaté continued. "This ban makes an already broken system even more harmful by cruelly denying families the chance to reunite."