Federal judge stops Trump administration from terminating certain international students’ legal status

Washington — A federal judge on Thursday blocked federal immigration officials with the Trump administration from terminating the legal status of thousands of international students while a legal battle moves forward.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White, who sits on the U.S. district court in Oakland, California, found that a group of foreign nationals who are in the country on F-1 student visas but had their legal status terminated were likely to succeed in a challenge to the Trump administration’s actions.

White said in a 21-page decision that federal immigration officials don’t suggest that the plaintiffs pose an immediate threat to safety or national security. But the students, he wrote, will “continue to suffer significant hardship” because of the administration’s actions, absent judicial relief.

White, nominated by President George W. Bush, wrote that the relief provided to the plaintiffs gives them a “measure of stability and certainty that they will be able to continue their studies or their employment without the threat of re-termination hanging over their heads.”

His nationwide injunction blocks immigration authorities from arresting or jailing the plaintiffs in the case or those who are similarly situated until the dispute is resolved, and from transferring them outside of the jurisdiction where they live. White’s order also bars the Trump administration from reversing its reinstatement of certain international students’ legal status.

The cases were brought by foreign nationals who were admitted to the U.S. through the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which Immigrations and Customs Enforcement oversees. The plaintiffs were in the country on F-1 visas, and records relating to their immigration status are housed in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS, a database that tracks international students’ compliance with their visa status.

But in early April, the plaintiffs and thousands of other international students in the U.S. on F-1 visas learned that their SEVIS records had been terminated as part of the Trump administration’s “Student Criminal Alien Initiative” for “otherwise failing to maintain status.”

They said that terminating their SEVIS record effectively terminates their F-1 status, which governs whether they’re in the U.S. lawfully. The plaintiffs said they were told their legal status had been terminated because they were “identified in a criminal records check and/or has had their visa revoked.”

Lawyers for the plaintiffs, who filed their lawsuit against the Trump administration last month, argued that while they each have had some contact with law enforcement, none has a criminal history that would pose a threat to their legal status in the U.S. or render them deportable.

After the international students filed their lawsuit against federal immigration authorities, a federal judge granted temporary restraining orders, which White later extended. Then, a Justice Department lawyer said that ICE had started reinstating SEVIS records for more than 4,700 students who had their student visa records terminated.

But White said those changes weren’t enough, and warned that the Trump administration’s actions since the cases were filed “raise the concern that they may be trying to place any future SEVIS terminations beyond judicial review.”

“At each turn in this and similar litigation across the nation, defendants have abruptly changed course to satisfy courts’ expressed concerns. It is unclear how this game of whack-a-mole will end unless defendants are enjoined from skirting their own mandatory regulations,” he wrote.

White’s order came after he held a hearing on motions for preliminary injunctions last week and learned during the proceedings that ICE had been restoring SEVIS records retroactively and that the administration planned to send letters to all student visa-holders impacted by the mass cancellations.

Still, he granted their requests for the injunction and rejected the Trump administration’s argument that a SEVIS record is not tied to immigration status, calling it “unpersuasive and unsupported.”

“By terminating plaintiffs’ SEVIS records, defendants altered plaintiffs’ legal status within the United States,” White wrote.

He also chided the Trump administration’s so-called “Student Criminal Alien Initiative,” and said that it underscored the need for nationwide relief.

“That initiative is a uniform policy that uniformly wreaked havoc not only on the lives of plaintiffs here but on similarly situated F-1 nonimmigrants across the United States and continues do so,” White wrote.