Thousands of international students studying in the US who had minor, and frequently disregarded, legal offenses have had their student visa registrations reinstated by the Trump administration.
Following weeks of intense court scrutiny and dozens of restraining orders issued by judges who determined that the mass termination of students from a federal database — used by universities and the federal government to track foreign students in the U.S. — was blatantly illegal, the Justice Department announced the wholesale reversal in federal court on Friday.
Thousands of students were worried and even panicked by the terminations, fearing they may be deported soon after losing their legal immigrant status. Many who filed lawsuits over the relocation said that, often only weeks before graduation, their colleges had also prohibited them from continuing their studies or coursework.
Judges were particularly irritated by the actions, which seemed arbitrary, and the government attorneys' refusal to state whether the pupils could stay in school or if they had to leave the country right away.
Judges in more than 50 of the complaints, which span at least 23 states, ordered the administration to temporarily reverse the terminations from the federal database earlier this month, sparking more than 100 lawsuits. Prior to Friday's reversal, dozens of additional judges appeared ready to follow suit.
A new policy pertaining to international students studying in the United States on so-called F-1 visas is being developed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to DOJ. No student's online student visa records, or SEVIS records, will be canceled "solely based on" criminal history checks that have shown misdemeanor charges and dismissed cases until that policy is implemented.
Whether the State Department is overturning a wave of outright visa cancellations for many of the same students was not immediately apparent. Last Monday, a federal official informed a judge that the government was conducting "quality control" on the rulings.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio cancelled the student visas of dozens of foreigners earlier this year because he believes their pro-Palestinian advocacy was interfering with U.S. foreign policy. However, students who had minor run-ins with the law and were also affected by the termination of their SEVIS database profiles seemed to be the focus of a more recent, more widespread round of visa cancellations.
Requests for response from the State Department and ICE were not immediately answered.
"ICE is creating a policy that will give SEVIS record terminations a structure. A Justice Department lawyer read from a written statement he was authorized to make on behalf of ICE in court on Friday. "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," the lawyer said.
According to the lawyer, "ICE retains the power to terminate a SEVIS record for other reasons, such as if the plaintiff engages in other illegal activity that would render him or her removable from the United States under the Immigration and Nationality Act or fails to maintain his or her nonimmigrant status after the record is reactivated."
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