Trump backs down in legal fight over canceling international students’ status records for now

By Tierney Sneed, Gloria Pazmino and Kristin Chapman, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration is backing down from a multi-state legal fight over sweeping actions taken by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement that potentially terminated the immigration status of thousands of international students studying in the United States.

The dramatic shift was announced in court proceedings across the country Friday and follows a flurry of legal action filed by students who said their legal status was being cancelled without explanation.

Department of Justice attorneys told the court immigration officials are working to create a new system to review and terminate the records for international students, known as SEVIS, that are connected to their immigration status. A statement read aloud in court and provided to the students’ attorneys said that “ICE is developing a policy that will provide a framework for SEVIS record terminations.” Additionally, officials said they will not base cancellations solely on whether a student comes up in a search of the National Crime Information Center.

In the meantime, officials said they would stop issuing new revocations based on those searches until the process was completed.

During a hearing Friday, a Justice Department attorney said ICE was in the process of reinstating the records of all the students who had been terminated in that process, not just those who had filed lawsuits.

In dozens of cases across the country, international students have sued the administration over ICE’s effort to cancel their immigration records in the SEVIS database.

The database, which is operated by the Department of Homeland Security, tracks the immigration status of international students and is used by universities to maintain information about the students’ enrollment.

The SEVIS revocations occurred alongside visa cancellations for many students, putting them ultimately at risk for deportation, multiple attorneys representing students have said in court documents. The DOJ continues to claim that SEVIS changes did not cause visa terminations.

The Trump administration began to cancel visas and launched deportation proceedings in March, which initially targeted students who participated in protests against the Israel-Hamas war on college campuses last year.

The blitz of enforcement caused panic and fear among international students, resulted in some detentions and at least two self-deportations. Weeks later, immigration officials began revoking students’ immigration statuses over minor legal infractions and in some cases without any apparent explanation.

Several federal judges have halted some of the revocations and issued restraining orders to make sure that students are not removed from the country.

The cases revealed that ICE was justifying the records terminations by arguing that the students had an alleged “criminal history,” including students who were arrested and never charged, or who had their charges dismissed.

While the restoration of student statuses is likely to calm fears among thousands of international students who worried the revocation of their status would put them at risk for deportation it does not appear to impact other international students whose visas were revoked, including Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts University student who was arrested near her home in Massachusetts, and Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident who was arrested near his home on campus after being accused of engaging in activities in support of Hamas.

ICE’s tampering with records put thousands of international students in limbo

In recent weeks, ICE appeared to cancel students’ SEVIS statuses for minor legal infractions including drunk driving and traffic violations, according to multiple lawsuits filed to stop the cancellations, with some students seeing records cancelled even if they had never been convicted of a crime. Students like Dartmouth University graduate researcher Xiaotian Liu, a Chinese national who is studying computer science and has been in the United States since 2016. Liu’s status was changed without notice earlier this month despite him never having committed a crime or a traffic violation, according to his attorney. A judge recently issued a restraining order to prevent any government action on Liu.

The vast majority of students who have had their visas and statuses revoked have not been detained or deported, but they have said the status revocation prevents them from continuing their coursework and to work at their campus-related jobs, which in turn threatens their immigration status.

Foreign students, who typically hold an F-1 visa, are required to meet specific criteria to maintain their status including full-time course work and no outside employment.

Some 4,700 students saw their records abruptly changed as part of the administration’s gambit, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“ICE is now officially pulling back from its disastrous and harmful actions that terminated the status of nearly 5,000 students with visas but only after AILA members and others filed dozens of lawsuits,” Gregory Chen, AILA’s senior director of government relations, said in a statement. “While ICE pulling back on its massive mistake now gives some relief to thousands of people, there are still long-term harms that continue to hurt these students and their families as well as American universities, research institutions and businesses. “

Legal fight not over yet

While the administration is arguing that its reinstatement of the records should defuse the quick-moving court fights over the SEVIS terminations, at least one judge on Friday continued to probe the administration’s actions.

Senior District Judge Jeffrey White, who sits in San Francisco, is requesting that the administration submit additional information about the new statement. He also grilled the DOJ attorneys on several questions he had asked them to prepare for ahead of the hearing.

Attorneys for the students, meanwhile, argued that ICE’s announcement did not address all the issues that had arisen because of the records’ termination.

One of those attorneys, John Sinodis called the new ICE statement “woefully inadequate” as he asked what it would mean for students who left the country because their records had been terminated. Would they be given a new visa to reenter, he asked. Will ICE arrest and detain those whose visas were revoked?

The judge himself seemed skeptical that the issues before him had been fully resolved, pushing back when a DOJ attorney urged him to consider that there was a “new world order” with Friday’s announcement.

“It seems like, from this administration, there’s a new world order every single day,” Judge White said.

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