The Trump administration on Friday reversed the termination of visa records for over 1,200 international students after weeks of mounting legal pressure and judicial rebuke over what courts described as a legally dubious crackdown. The Department of Justice announced in federal court that Immigration and Customs Enforcement would reactivate student visa records that had been summarily deleted from the federal SEVIS tracking system based on minor or dismissed infractions.
The abrupt terminations, which began in March, caught students and universities across the country off guard, triggering more than 100 lawsuits and emergency injunctions in at least 23 states. Some students, fearing deportation, left the country or stopped attending classes. In numerous cases, school officials only discovered the terminations during routine checks of the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS.
"ICE is developing a policy that will provide a framework for SEVIS record terminations," a Justice Department attorney said during a court hearing Friday in Oakland, California. "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 reactivated 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."
The NCIC, or National Crime Information Center, is a federal database maintained by the FBI. Government lawyers acknowledged that records had been terminated without notification to the students or their schools, often based on misdemeanor charges or previously dismissed legal incidents.
The move to reverse course comes amid widespread judicial frustration. Multiple federal judges issued temporary restraining orders over the past two weeks, with some courts accusing the administration of violating due process and failing to articulate whether students were still permitted to attend class or had to leave the U.S. immediately. In dozens more cases, judges appeared poised to issue similar orders before Friday's announcement.
The impact has been far-reaching. According to an Associated Press review of court filings and university records, at least 1,220 students at 187 colleges and university systems were affected. Many students said their visa cancellations followed minor brushes with law enforcement, and did not relate to the pro-Palestinian activism that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had previously cited as justification for visa revocations.
Earlier this year, Rubio said the State Department had canceled visas of individuals he accused of undermining U.S. foreign policy interests. However, many of the students impacted by the SEVIS purge said they were not involved in any activism and were blindsided by the sudden loss of legal status.
Despite Friday's announcement, it remains unclear whether the State Department is reversing the accompanying visa cancellations. A federal official told a judge last week that the agency was performing "quality control" reviews of those decisions, but offered no timeline for resolution.
ICE maintains the authority to terminate SEVIS records on other legal grounds. "ICE will not modify the record solely based on the NCIC finding," the government attorney said Friday, but added that students could still lose status "if the plaintiff fails to maintain his or her nonimmigrant status... or engages in other unlawful activity."
