Shocking Judges, Trump’s Kafkaesque Attacks on Foreign Students!

In the chaos following directives from the Trump administration, many U.S. colleges and universities erroneously instructed international students to leave the country. This followed threats of defunding by President Donald Trump and pressure from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to a detailed report preceding several recent court rulings against the government.

As a result, numerous institutions informed “many hundreds” of international students that they had lost their immigration status and needed to self-deport immediately. These actions were based on the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) cessation of students’ records in the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a critical database for managing visa information as reported by The Intercept‘s Natasha Lennard last week.

This occurred despite DHS’s own admission in a court filing last week that it lacks the authority to end a student’s immigration status through this system.

To date, the State Department has canceled the visas of over 1,500 students, with the majority being nonwhite individuals and particularly those advocating for Palestinian rights, Lennard highlighted.

However, it’s critical to distinguish between the revocation of a student visa and the actual rescission of legal nonimmigrant status.

As Lennard explains:

The cancellation of a student visa does not automatically mean a student must be deported. Yet, institutions have been responding to SEVIS terminations—not visa cancellations—by disenrolling students or advising them to leave the U.S. immediately.

“ICE has now confirmed in sworn statements that the termination of a SEVIS record does not legally impact the student,” said Nathan Yaffe, a lawyer representing international students in deportation cases, to Lennard.

“Colleges that continue to disenroll students are essentially punishing them to stay in line with the Trump administration’s policies,” Yaffe continued. “Disenrolling students was already a blatant capitulation, and now it is utterly indefensible.”

The DHS’s admission was in response to a lawsuit initiated by students from the University of Michigan and Wayne State University who challenged the Trump administration over the termination of their F-1 status, enabling them to study in the U.S. This lawsuit is among 16 filed by at least 50 international students facing deportation, according to Inside Higher Ed.

The Trump administration argues that since the visas were revoked by the State Department and not the DHS, the students have targeted the wrong federal agency. However, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which allows the Secretary of State to expel noncitizens considered detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests, explicitly blocks judicial review of visa revocations.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has used this act to target pro-Palestine international students, including Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Yunseo Chung, who are permanent U.S. residents, along with Rümeysa Öztürk, Ranjani Srinivasan, and others. Pro-Israel right-wing groups like Betar and Canary Mission have compiled and shared lists of these and other pro-Palestine students with the Trump administration for potential deportation.

Both foreign nationals and some U.S. citizens caught in the Trump administration’s deportation efforts are detained in facilities, including private, for-profit detention centers. These centers are notorious for poor conditions and alleged abuses such as denial of medical care, insufficient feminine hygiene products, and substandard food, notably at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center.

The Trump administration’s questionable legal strategies have generally been unsuccessful in court. Multiple federal courts have temporarily halted the administration from proceeding with deportations based on SEVIS terminations.

“How is this happening? There needs to be clear regulations governing appropriate and inappropriate actions.”

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Victoria M. Calvert, appointed by former President Joe Biden, issued a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration and instructed ICE to restore the legal status of 133 students whose visas were canceled due to SEVIS terminations, often for minor offenses like traffic violations.

Akiva Freidlin, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Georgia, who filed the lawsuit, stated, “The Constitution protects everyone on American soil, so the Trump administration cannot sidestep due process to unjustly threaten students with loss of immigration status, and arrest and deportation.”

“We are optimistic that this ruling indicates the students will likely succeed in their claims, and we are relieved that the court has ordered the government to stop its illegal actions while the lawsuit proceeds,” Freidlin added.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Michael McShane, nominated by former President Barack Obama, temporarily blocked the deportation of two students in Oregon and directed the Trump administration to restore their status.

“How is this happening?” asked Judge McShane incredulously. “There must be some guidelines for when actions are appropriate and when they are not. What rules is ICE following here?”

Last week, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, another Biden nominee, delivered a significant rebuke to Trump officials.

“I am dealing with two experienced immigration lawyers representing a client who is just months from graduating, who has done nothing wrong, yet has been removed from a system which you keep insisting has no impact on his immigration status, which is clearly not true,” Reyes stated.

“And now, his two highly skilled lawyers can’t even clarify his legal status, because the court can’t confirm it, nor can the government’s counsel,” she continued. “Do you understand how absurd this is?”

Last week, the ACLU and its affiliates launched a federal class action lawsuit in New Hampshire against the Trump administration for targeting international students whose F-1 status had been revoked.

“The government’s unilateral and illegal terminations have severely disrupted the educational pursuits of students in the midst of their studies (and semester), who are merely trying to secure an education in the United States at considerable cost while adhering to all necessary regulations,” the lawsuit claims.