On Thursday, Judge Jeffrey S White of the Northern District of California blocked Trump administration’s bid to detain and deport a certain group of international students. The temporary relief accorded to those who are in the US thanks to student visas has barred the federal government from arresting foreign students. Furthermore, their visas cannot be revoked either until the ongoing legal battle reaches a resolution.
The President George W Bush-appointed judge’s major ruling focusses on those international students among thousands who faced visa revocations earlier this year. In a 21-page decision, White suggested that these revocations were not backed by clear justification. And so, the relief provided to the plaintiffs this week will give 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.”
Temporary relief for international students on F-1 student visas and more
In addition to the aforementioned group of those on F-1 student visas, Judge White’s ruling also applied to all “similarly situated individuals” attached to the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. According to the official ICE website, SEVP “collects, maintains, analyzes and provides information so only legitimate foreign students or exchange visitors gain entry to the United States.” In addition to keeping a check on institutions accepting nonimmigrant students, it monitors records related to F-1 and M-1 nonimmigrant students and their dependents, exchange visitor program sponsors and J-1 exchange visitors and their dependents.
With the Trump administration’s potential move to push for future visa “terminations beyond judicial review,” White wrote, “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.”
US court counters Trump’s so-called ‘Student Criminal Alien Initiative’
In early April, the plaintiffs tied to this case and thousands of other international student on F-1 visas discovered that their SEVIS record had been terminated under the Trump admin’s “Student Criminal Alien Initiative.” Those affected said that their legal status termination was attributed to them being “identified in a criminal records check and/or has had their visa revoked.” Their lawyers, on the other hand, argued that while their clients had a brush with law enforcement, nobody had a criminal history that asked for their deportation.
“By terminating plaintiffs’ SEVIS records, defendants altered plaintiffs’ legal status within the United States,” Judge white wrote. Also taking a dig at the current admin’s “Student Criminal Alien Initiative, he added, “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.”
This significant, though currently temporary, relief for the international students in question followed shortly after Trump’s government claimed to have barred Harvard University from enrolling foreign students.