Just a day before a key hearing in which a United States District judge in Oakland could have decided the fates of hundreds of students nationwide whose visas had been terminated, students, attorneys and universities across the country began reporting unexpected reinstatements of their status — even for individuals who had not filed a lawsuit.
The judge granted a temporary status restoration to all of the plaintiffs named in the case, but did not make a national order. The next hearing is set for mid-May.
The hearing was set to consider a case that had been consolidated with eight related lawsuits filed on behalf of more than 50 students and recent graduates. Roughly one-third of the plaintiffs had their status restored shortly before the hearing. A government attorney confirmed the change, saying that the department is working on a new system for the termination of status for international students and that their status will be reactivated until the process is complete.
No formal announcement had been made prior to the hearing, and affected students said they received no explanation for the reinstatement.
The sudden reversal comes amid mounting legal pressure, with at least 60 lawsuits challenging the government’s sweeping status terminations. More efforts are underway to seek broad relief, like a nationwide injunction, and several class-action lawsuits have been filed.
“It very well could be that the litigation that’s been occurring throughout the country has caused some sort of change,” said Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, which filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of students who had had their status terminated. Bissonnette said that some but not all clients he worked with have their status restored.
Yet Bissonnette criticized the lack of transparency in the process.
“This whole system or policy was implemented in secret without any transparency, and students have been left to try to decipher what to do as a result,” Bissonnette said. “I think that’s part of the problem.”
In addition to wondering about the government’s rapidly changing position, lawyers in Friday’s hearing questioned to what extent the restoration would affect students, since in many cases the harm had already been done. Students who left the country now need to apply for new visas, and some have lost their jobs and even been detained.
During the hearing, government attorney Pamela Johann argued that nationwide relief, which the plaintiffs’ attorney had been seeking, was unnecessary, claiming the department was already adopting the forthcoming policy “in real time.”
“ICE is going to reactivate all of these records,” Johann told the court.
But U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White expressed skepticism. “It seems like with this administration there’s a new order every day,” he told Johann.
John Nicholas Sinodis, one of the attorneys representing plaintiffs in three of the cases consolidated in April, echoed that concern.
“The government could just change its position tomorrow morning,” Sinodis said.
He argued that a national injunction remains necessary to prevent long-term consequences for affected students. Reinstating a person’s status does not necessarily solve all their problems, Sinodis said, because the time they remained in the United States while their status was terminated could count against them in future visa applications.
“To invalidate it just to the person in lawsuit is insufficient,” he said. “It has to be corrected for the entire country.”
Beginning in early April, the Department of Homeland Security started terminating student records in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, a federal database used to track nonimmigrant visa holders. According to Inside Higher Ed, as of Thursday, more than 1,800 students at 280 colleges across the U.S. had their legal status terminated by the State Department.
The case is one of more than 60 suits filed by students with terminated visas nationwide. It was brought by four international students, represented by Bay Area firm DeHeng Law Offices and the Chinese American Legal Defense Alliance, a nonprofit offering free legal representation to Chinese Americans facing racial discrimination.
Even after the four original plaintiffs were granted a temporary status reinstatement in mid-April, their lawyers pushed for a nationwide decision, noting that the wave of terminations had affected many students in similar circumstances. To underscore that point, attorneys added declarations from 36 other students across 30 colleges and universities nationwide, all of whom had their status abruptly terminated despite having no criminal convictions.
Later, a district judge consolidated the case with eight others that had been filed individually and jointly by more than 50 plaintiffs. The consolidated cases were also assigned to a new judge, White.
