Students remain anxious even after visa records are restored
The Trump administration has done an about-face, reversing its action to terminate the legal status of thousands of international students.
But the announcement, made during a hearing on one of dozens of legal challenges to the administration’s efforts, does not close the chapter on what for many has been a frightening and unnerving saga. It remains unclear what prompted the mass cancellation of records in a federal student-visa database. And immigration officials have said they are working on a new system for reviewing and terminating the records of international students and scholars — meaning that the current reprieve may be temporary.
“As far as students and families go, their trust has been broken,” said Fanta Aw, executive director of NAFSA: Association of International Educators.
The Trump administration had characterized the student-visa crackdown as part of a campaign against campus antisemitism. However, except for a few initial high-profile arrests of pro-Palestinian activists, the larger wave of status revocations appear tied to often-minor, or even dismissed, legal infractions, like traffic or parking violations. Some students said they had no encounters with law enforcement and no idea why their legal right to study in the United States had been rescinded.
In recent days, judges in cases across the country have issued emergency orders temporarily blocking changes to students’ legal status. Polls suggest a majority of Americans oppose efforts to deport international students.
In a statement read in court on Friday, a government lawyer said that students’ immigration status “will remain active or shall be reactivated if not currently active” in the student-visa records system, known as the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS. The lawyer also said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees SEVIS, would not modify students’ records “solely based” on information from a national criminal database.
But the fallout remains. Although the government began restoring the more than 4,700 terminated records late Thursday, the process is slow going and tedious, meaning that some may still be waiting for reinstatement. Many students have missed classes because of uncertainty about their status or fear of being arrested, just weeks before the end of the semester. Recent graduates taking part in a work program known as optional practical training may have lost their jobs. And some students left the country, or self-deported, meaning that they could have to reapply for new visas.
“There’s a real cost to this, and that hasn’t gone away,” Aw said.
Also of concern, while student records have been reactivated, they continue to show the previous termination. Past terminations could be a black mark against students who apply for green cards or otherwise try to change their immigration status, said Miriam Feldblum, chief executive of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration.
The government’s U-turn “does not erase the harm to students or institutions,” Feldblum said. The administration “upended readily accepted practices and established norms, and we’re still in a type of limbo.”
The Presidents’ Alliance, a coalition of college presidents and chancellors, has filed its own lawsuit, arguing that students were stripped of their legal status without warning, explanation, or ability to respond. The group plans to continue with the lawsuit, Feldblum said.
Lawmakers are still asking questions, too. On Monday, a group of 35 Democratic U.S. senators sent a letter to Trump administration officials, calling the revocations “unlawful” and asking for detailed information about the administration’s decision-making and the demographics of students who had their legal status or their visas terminated.
They also cautioned the administration about its plans to put in place a new student-visa policy. “Any such changes must be consistent with applicable statutes, including requirements for notice with respect to changes that would deprive a student of their status and ability to live and study in the United States and place them at risk of detention,” said the letter, spearheaded by Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions from The Chronicle about what problems the administration was hoping to fix with a new policy or about whether stakeholders would be involved in the process. Typically, regulatory changes are preceded by the publication of proposed rules and opportunities for public comment.
Meanwhile, the aftereffects of the crackdown could continue to be felt by current international students considering travel outside of the United States over the summer break and by prospective students weighing whether to attend an American college.
Harvard University told incoming international undergraduates they could also accept admission to a second, non-American college as a “backup plan.”
In an email obtained by The Harvard Crimson, college officials said they were aware of students’ concerns and were “doing everything possible to enroll the students we have admitted.”
