The Department of Justice walked back on canceling student visas on Friday.
The DOJ made the reversal known in filings across the country. From Newsmax:
A lawyer for the government read a statement in federal court in Oakland that said ICE was manually 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 on Friday, 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 [Student and Exchange Visitor Information Systems] 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.”Green said that the government lawyer said it would apply to all students in the same situation, not just those who had filed lawsuits.
Green also said: “ICE maintains the authority to terminate a SEVIS record for other reasons, such as if the plaintiff fails to maintain his or her nonimmigrant status after the record is reactivated or engages in other unlawful activity that would render him or her removable from the United States under the Immigration and Nationality Act.”
The visa terminations led to over 100 lawsuits in 23 states. Judges in 50 of the cases told Trump’s “administration to temporarily undo the actions.”
However, we do not know if the State Department will take the same action:
A federal official told a judge last week that the agency was performing “quality control” on those decisions.Earlier this year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio canceled the student visas of dozens of foreigners he contends were disrupting U.S. foreign policy through pro-Palestinian activism. However, a more recent, larger wave of visa cancellations appeared to target students who had minor brushes with the law and were also impacted by the termination of their profiles in the SEVIS database.
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