The Trump administration has restored the student visa registrations of thousands of foreign students studying in the United States who had minor — and often dismissed — legal infractions.
The Justice Department announced the wholesale reversal in federal court Friday after weeks of intense scrutiny by courts and dozens of restraining orders issued by judges who deemed the mass termination of students from a federal database — used by universities and the federal government to track foreign students in the U.S. — as flagrantly illegal.
The terminations caused concern and even panic for thousands of students who feared the possibility they had lost their legal immigration status and could be quickly deported. Many who sued over the move said their schools had also blocked their ability to continue taking classes or conducting research, sometimes just weeks before graduation.
Judges also expressed frustration with the seemingly arbitrary moves and the unwillingness of government lawyers to say whether the students could continue to attend classes or needed to leave the country immediately.
The terminations from the federal database earlier this month sparked more than 100 lawsuits, with judges in more than 50 of the cases — spanning at least 23 states — ordering the administration to temporarily undo the actions. Dozens more judges seemed prepared to follow suit before Friday’s reversal.
DOJ said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is working on a new policy regarding foreign students studying in the United States on so-called F-1 visas. Until that policy is issued, no students will have their online student-visa records, known as SEVIS records, terminated “solely based on” criminal history checks that had flagged misdemeanor charges and dismissed cases.
It was not immediately clear whether the State Department is reversing a wave of outright cancellation of the visas of many of the same students. A federal official told a judge last week that the agency was performing “quality control” on those decisions.
Earlier this year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio canceled the student visas of dozens of foreigners he contends were disrupting U.S. foreign policy through pro-Palestinian activism. However, a more recent, larger wave of visa cancellations appeared to target students who had minor brushes with the law and were also impacted by the termination of their profiles in the SEVIS database.
ICE and State Department spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“ICE is developing a policy that will provide a framework for SEVIS record terminations. Until such a policy is issued, the SEVIS records for plaintiff(s) in this case (and other similarly situated plaintiffs) will remain active or shall be reactivated if not currently active, and ICE will not modify the record solely based on the NCIC finding that resulted in the recent SEVIS record termination,” a Justice Department attorney said in court Friday, reading from a written statement he was authorized to make on ICE’s behalf.
“ICE maintains the authority to terminate a SEVIS record for other reasons, such as if the plaintiff fails to maintain his or her nonimmigrant status after the record is reactivated or engages in other unlawful activity that would render him or her removable from the United States under the Immigration and Nationality Act,” the attorney said.
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