The visa terminations sparked more than 100 lawsuits from students who feared immediate deportation. Judges blocked the terminations in many cases and questioned the administration’s blanket move.
Trump administration restores visa registrations for foreign students
The Trump administration restored visa registrations for potentially thousands of foreign students.
- The Trump administration reversed its abrupt termination of student visa registrations in a federal database.
WASHINGTON – The Trump administration reversed course and said it is restoring the student visa registrations of potentially thousands of foreign students in the U.S. whose legal status was abruptly terminated, setting off a scramble among students who feared being deported immediately.
The Justice Department announced the decision in a filing on April 25 in U.S. district court in Massachusetts.
Universities have reported some students being forced to leave immediately, in many cases after discovering their visas were canceled in the federal Student Exchange and Visitor Information System (SEVIS) or via an unexpected text or email.
Universities and the government use the database to track foreign students and students rely on it for their authorization to remain in the country. The terminations sparked more than 100 lawsuits. NAFSA, the Association of International Educators, has tallied roughly 1,400 revocations.
The federal government indicated to congressional committees on April 10 that it had terminated more than 4,700 immigration status records for foreign students, according to NAFSA. Expunging those records, which international students rely on to remain in the U.S. legally, is different from revoking visas.
With a record 1.1 million foreign students in the country, at stake is the $44 billion they contributed to the U.S. economy last year, according to the Association of American Universities, a higher education advocacy group.
Over 200 students removed from SEVIS have won court orders temporarily barring the administration from taking actions against them, according to a Reuters count.
Mark Sauter, an assistant U.S. attorney in Massachusetts, submitted a document that said Immigration and Customs Enforcement was developing a policy to terminate SEVIS records. But the registrations will remain active or be reactivated until that system is developed.
“ICE maintains the authority to terminate a SEVIS record for other reasons,” such as engaging in unlawful activity, the filing said in the case of a foreign student at Boston University, whose name is being withheld at her request.
Brad Banias, a lawyer for BU student, had said in another filing that her registration remained terminated at 10:45 a.m. The student has been unable to attend classes at BU without an active record in the SEVIS database.
Chief U.S. Judge Dennis Saylor in Boston, who has temporarily blocked the student’s termination, set another hearing in the case for May 6.
Saylor wrote that ICE anticipates reactivation “may take some time, because it involves a nationwide change in policy.” Saylor also wrote that the student’s record record wouldn’t be updated based solely on an unspecified finding in the National Crime Information Center that resulted in her termination.
Some information in this story was removed to reflect the privacy wishes of a person publicly identified in federal court records.
Contributing: Zachary Schermele
(This story has been updated with more information.)
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