Thousands of international students studying in the United States whose immigration status was revoked by the Department of Homeland Security this month may now see that status restored.
On Friday, lawyers for the Trump administration said at a hearing that the Department of Justice planned to reactivate the immigration status of students whose status had been recently revoked, several media outlets reported.
Many of those students have already left the country. The unprecedented scale and lack of clear explanation for these changes left other students fearful that they might be next.
But signs that the Trump administration was backing down appeared on Thursday when college administrators doing a regular check of the government database known as SEVIS to see if any new students had lost their status noticed something new, according to one who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized by their college to speak to the media. Several students’ immigration status had been restored. When administrators checked a few hours later, several more students’ status had been restored. At the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, two of the three students whose immigration status had been changed saw their status restored on Friday, a spokesperson said.
More than 4,700 students saw their immigration status terminated in the first two weeks of April, according to statistics shared with The Chronicle, jeopardizing their ability to remain in the United States legally. Many of the students previously had small interactions with law enforcement, such as speeding tickets or other infractions. But some said they had not had any infractions, and others said that they had never been charged or charges against them had been dismissed.
Hundreds of students sued the government, saying their offenses, if they had any, did not warrant the government pulling their ability to continue their studies in the United States. (The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration also brought a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and others.) So far, those students have notched wins in court. Last week, a federal judge in Georgia ordered Homeland Security to restore the immigration status of 133 students.
The revelation of a large-scale change in policy came Friday morning, when an assistant U.S. attorney told a judge at a federal hearing for another of these cases that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will reactivate the status of the students and recent graduates whose statuses were recently changed. WUSA9 reported that the attorney said the change would be made while ICE develops “a policy that will provide a framework for SEVIS record terminations.”
It was not immediately clear on Friday whether all students would have their status restored or a subset of the 4,700. The college administrator who spoke to The Chronicle said most students’ status still appeared terminated in the database on Friday. The students whose status was restored were not involved in active lawsuits, the administrator said.
Several international students, the administrator said, had already left the United States. They must reapply for student visas in order to enter the country, which some intend to do so they can return for the fall semester.
