The U.S. government is reversing the termination of legal status for international students around the country after many filed court challenges against the Trump administration’s crackdown, federal officials said Friday.
The records in a federal student database maintained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement had been terminated in recent weeks. Judges across the U.S. had already issued orders temporarily restoring students’ records in dozens of lawsuits challenging the terminations.
More than 1,200 students nationwide suddenly lost their legal status or had visas revoked, leaving them at risk for deportation. Many said they had only minor infractions on their record or did not know why they were targeted. Some left the country while others have gone into hiding or stopped going to class.
In Colorado, at least 38 international students had seen their visas revoked by the Trump administration in recent weeks.
Zachary R. New, an Aurora-based immigration attorney who filed nine lawsuits on behalf of Colorado students, said Friday that he already had seen records restored for some of the international students he represents.
“We are very happy to see that ICE has changed its tune on this issue, but it has been so incredibly disruptive and harmful to thousands of students, and we still need answers both for the students in these lawsuits and for students who were not able to join a lawsuit,” he wrote in an email to The Denver Post.
Spokeswoman Michele Ames said the University of Colorado was “aware of the reinstatement of some student visas across our campuses.”
“As we have since student visa revocations began, we are keeping our focus on supporting our impacted students and all international students,” she said.
As of April 17, CU officials said they were aware of 22 student-visa revocations across their campuses in Boulder, Denver, Aurora and Colorado Springs. Colorado State University officials said 16 of their students have had visas revoked.
Government says it will restore student status
In one of the lawsuits, Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Kurlan read a statement in federal court in Oakland, California, saying ICE was restoring the student status for people whose records were terminated in recent weeks.
A similar statement was read by a government attorney in a separate case in Washington, said lawyer Brian Green, who represents the plaintiff in that case. Green provided The Associated Press with a copy of the statement that the government lawyer emailed to him.
It says: “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 re-activated 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.”
SEVIS is the Student and Exchange Visitor Information Systems database that tracks international students’ compliance with their visa status. NCIC is the National Crime Information Center, a database of criminal justice information maintained by the FBI.
Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant Homeland Security secretary, said ICE had not reversed course on any visa revocations but did “restore SEVIS access for people who had not had their visa revoked.”
Greg Chen, with the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said some uncertainty remained: “It is still unclear whether ICE will restore status to everyone it has targeted and whether the State Department will help students whose visas were wrongly revoked.”
The first three lawsuits filed by New on behalf of Colorado students earlier this month said each had been notified that their SEVIS records were being terminated. Each of the students has minor criminal infractions on their record, but has not been subjected to removal proceedings, according to the lawsuits
New on Friday said ICE’s decision “does take some of the ’emergency’ out of these cases,” but that many questions remain, including what impact the temporary SEVIS disruption will have on the students’ abilities to stay in the U.S. in the future.
“A big lingering question is just ‘why?’ ” New wrote. “Did ICE terminate all of these records for no reason at all, or were there alternative plans (detention, deportation, etc.) that either were not able to take effect because of the hundreds of lawsuits filed across the country?”
Legal fights may not be over
Green, who is involved in lawsuits on behalf of several dozen students, said his cases only sought restoration of the student status and that he would be withdrawing them as a result of the statement Friday from ICE.
But lawyers in the Oakland case are seeking a nationwide order from the court prohibiting the government from arresting or incarcerating students, transferring them to places outside their district or preventing them from continuing work or studies.
Pam Johann, a government lawyer, said it was premature to consider anything like that given that ICE was in the process of reactivating records and developing a policy. “We should take a pause while ICE is implementing this change that plaintiffs are seeking right now, on its own,” she said.
But U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White asked her to humor the court.
“It seems like with this administration there’s a new world order every single day,” he said. “Itap like whack-a-mole.”
He ordered the government to clarify the new policy.
Visa revocations and student status terminations caused confusion
Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said his department was revoking visas held by people acting counter to national interests, including some who protested Israel’s war in Gaza and those who face criminal charges. But many students whose status was terminated said they did not fall under those categories.
A survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs research found that even the visa revocations for students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests are more unpopular than popular. About half of U.S. adults oppose this policy, and only 3 in 10 are in support. Among college educated adults, 6 in 10 strongly oppose, compared with 4 in 10 who aren’t college graduates.
In lawsuits, students argued they were denied due process. Many were told that their status was terminated as a result of a criminal records check or that their visa had been revoked.
International students and their schools were caught off guard by the terminations of the students’ records. Many of the terminations were discovered when school officials were doing routine checks of the international student database.
Charles Kuck, who filed a case in Atlanta on behalf of 133 students across the country said ICE’s reversal can’t undo the distress and hardship they have faced in recent weeks.
“I’ve got kids who lost their jobs, who might not get them back,” he said. “I’ve got kids who lost school opportunities who might not get them back. We’ve got kids who missed finals, missed graduation. How do you get any of that stuff back?”
Jodie Ferise, a higher education attorney in Indiana, said some students at schools her law firm works with already left the country after receiving instructions to self-deport.
“This unprecedented treatment of student status had caused tremendous fear among international students,” Ferise said. “Some of them were too frightened to wait and hope for the administration to change course.”
Earlier this week, before the governmentap reversal, Ferise said the situation could hurt international student enrollment.
“The world is watching, and we will lose students, not just by the technical revocation of their status, but by the message we’re sending that we don’t want them anyway and that it isn’t safe to even try to go to school here,” she said.
At least 1,220 students at 187 colleges, universities and university systems have had their visas revoked, their legal status terminated or both, since late March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements, correspondence with school officials and court records. The AP has been working to confirm reports of hundreds more students who are caught up in the crackdown.
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Brumback reported from Atlanta. Christopher L. Keller in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Makiya Seminera, in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Annie Ma, Rebecca Santana and Linley Sanders in Washington, contributed reporting.
