The U.S. government has restored the legal status of thousands of international students who had had it revoked in recent weeks. Their records, which were in a federal database maintained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had previously been erased. The revocation of the visas led to multiple lawsuits against the federal administration in various courts around the country. There had been more than 1,200 students who had temporarily lost their legal status.
Some, to avoid worse trouble, left the country willingly, while others stopped attending classes. However, on Friday, the Trump administration did an about-face on the issue. In a note sent by a government lawyer to the AP, it said that “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 visa compliance by international students. NCIC, on the other hand, is the National Crime Information Center, a database of criminal justice information maintained by the FBI. Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant Homeland Security secretary, confirmed that ICE has restored access to SEVIS for people whose visas had not been revoked.
Several colleges, in turn, reported that they had noticed that legal status had already been restored for some of their students. Despite this, uncertainty remains. “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,” lawyers for some students said.
Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that his department would revoke visas from individuals acting against national interests, including students who protested the Israeli war in Gaza and those charged with criminal offenses. But many of those whose legal status was revoked said they did not fall into these categories.
In the various lawsuits, moreover, those involved claimed that they were deprived of due process. Most of the students discovered that they had lost their legal status by accident, thanks to routine checks by various school officials. By Friday evening, more than 240 SEVIS accounts had already been restored, according to CNN data.
