International college students here in GA file lawsuit after having visas revoked
The filing claims the government violated their Fifth Amendment rights to due process and asks the court for a temporary restraining order to reinstate their legal status.
It names Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons as defendants in the case.
A total of 17 students from across the country have joined as plaintiffs in the suit.
Students involved in the suit here in Georgia attend Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, Emory, and Kennesaw State universities.
With their visas now terminated, that means students can be detained by immigration authorities.
The lawsuit complaint says visas were terminated without notice and without providing the students with an opportunity to respond.
'At the most elemental level, the United States Constitution requires notice and a meaningful opportunity to be heard,' the complaint reads.
TRENDING STORIES:
Former Georgia Police Academy instructor charged with child molestation
1 dead, 4 in critical condition after crash at busy Atlanta intersection
Attorneys reveal settlement amount between Marjorie Taylor Greene's ex-husband, 3 Muslim women
As of Friday, more than 500 visas had been revoked nationwide for students at 88 colleges and universities as part of the Trump administration's efforts to carry out mass deportations.
The U.S. State Department is manually terminating records in the Student and Exchange Visitor program.
It has not informed most of the universities or students about their visa cancellations. Universities discovered the visa revocations by checking the system.
Channel 2's Courtney Francisco reported on the visa terminations last week on WSB Tonight, where she spoke with Javeria Jamil, The Legal Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
She said some of those students impacted are undergraduate students, others are in their masters, Ph.D., or professional training programs.
'There's mostly a lot of fear right now, and there also a lot of uncertainty on what, if anything, they can do to protect themselves to make sure that they can continue their education,' Jamil said.
She's been warning students this could happen as the Trump Administration condemned pro-Palestinian demonstrations at universities nationwide.
CAIR Georgia said some of the students they're working with were not involved in any protests.
'So, it was unclear why their visas are being revoked. Except for, perhaps, a minor traffic violation like speeding,' Jamil said.
Francisco also spoke with The Chairman of the Georgia Association of College Republicans, Emanuel Hernaiz, who supports the visa revocations.
'It's a privilege to study in our grade schools, and, you know, many people fight for those student visas, and if you're going to use that privilege to go against the interest of America, well, we should give those opportunities to people who actually want to support the county,' Hernaiz said. 'Free speech is OK, but we shouldn't allow violence and terrorist supporters to have those student visas.'
As for the lawsuit, a hearing over the temporary restraining order has been scheduled for Thursday morning.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
36 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump says D.C. has been 'overtaken' by crime. The data tells a different story.
The president announced Monday that federal authorities would be taking control of the capital's police force. President Trump announced Monday that the Washington, D.C., police force will be placed under the control of the federal government in order to 'restore law, order and public safety' in the nation's capital. 'Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people. And we're not going to let it happen anymore,' Trump said during a press conference Monday morning. D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department will temporarily be overseen by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, the president said. He added that 800 National Guard troops will be deployed to deal with the 'dire public safety crisis' in the city. Trump also zeroed in on D.C.'s homelessness problem, which, he argued, had made some of the capital's most important public spaces 'disgusting.' 'We're going to be removing homeless encampments from all over our parks — our beautiful, beautiful parks — which now a lot of people can't walk on,' he said. Trump does have the power to oversee what happens in D.C. because of its unique role as home to the nation's seat of government. The law gives the president the power to temporarily take over the city's law enforcement operations. Trump did not say how long federal authorities would be in charge of D.C.'s police. Trump invokes the Home Rule Act to take control of the Washington, D.C., police. What the act says he can and can't do. What's happening with crime in D.C.? The president's description of crime in Washington, D.C., is not reflected in official statistics, which show that the city had its lowest violent crime rate in 30 years in 2024. The rates of homicide, sex abuse, assault with a dangerous weapon and robbery all fell by at least 25% compared to 2023, according to statistics from the U.S. attorney's office for the district. The total number of nonviolent property crimes in D.C. also dropped last year, according to FBI data. Year-over-year statistics only provide part of the picture. A longer timeline shows that D.C. — like the country as a whole — has gotten much safer over the course of the past several decades. In 1991, there were 482 homicides in the nation's capital, more than two and a half times as many as there were in 2024. It's not just homicides. The rate of violent crimes in D.C. has dropped by two-thirds since its peak in the early 1990s, according to FBI statistics compiled by data scientist Jeff Asher. Over the same period, the number of nonviolent property crimes has been cut in half. Like most of the rest of the nation, D.C. did see a spike in violent crime, particularly homicides, after the COVID-19 pandemic. The city's overall violent crime rate has dropped back down to pre-pandemic levels, but the number of homicides is still slightly elevated. How does D.C. compare to other U.S. cities? While Trump's claims about crime rates in the capital aren't consistent with official data, it is true that D.C. is one of the most dangerous cities in the country, at least in terms of homicide rate. While its relatively small size meant that it had far fewer total homicides than metropolises like New York and Chicago, D.C. had the fourth-highest per-capita homicide rate of any major American city last year, according to a nationwide analysis conducted by researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology. What about homelessness? Washington, D.C., does face persistent challenges with homelessness. The question of whether the problem has gotten dramatically worse in the city depends in part on the timeline you look at. This year's annual Point-in-Time count tallied just over 9,600 people experiencing homelessness across the city. That's a significant increase from 2022, when there were roughly 7,400 people counted. If you look further back in time, however, even the elevated numbers from 2025 are still well below where they were throughout the 2010s, when the homeless count consistently topped 11,000. D.C. is also not alone in seeing an increase in homelessness over the past few years. Nationwide, the total number of homeless people hit the highest level ever recorded due to a combination of inflation, wage stagnation and skyrocketing housing prices, according to federal data.
Boston Globe
37 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Trump's big bill powers his mass deportations
The staggering sum is powering the nation's sweeping new Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'We're getting them out at record numbers,' Trump said at the White House bill signing ceremony. 'We have an obligation to, and we're doing it.' And it's not just the big bill's fresh infusion of funds fueling the president's agenda of one million deportations a year. In the months since Trump took office, his administration has been shifting as much as $1 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other accounts to pay for immigration enforcement and deportation operations, lawmakers said. 'Your agency is out of control,' Senator Chris Murphy told Noem during a Senate committee hearing in the spring. The senator warned that Homeland Security would 'go broke' by July. Noem quickly responded that she always lives within her budget. But Murphy said later in a letter to Homeland Security, objecting to its repurposing funds, that ICE was being directed to spend at an 'indefensible and unsustainable rate to build a mass deportation army,' often without approval from Congress. This past week, the new Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York, along with a subcommittee chairman, Rep. Michael Guest of Mississippi, requested a briefing from Noem on the border security components of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or OBBBA, which included $46 billion over the next four years for Trump's long-sought US-Mexico border wall. 'We write today to understand how the Department plans to outlay this funding to deliver a strong and secure homeland for years to come,' the GOP lawmakers said in a letter to the homeland security secretary, noting border apprehensions are at record lows. 'We respectfully request that you provide Committee staff with a briefing on the Department's plan to disburse OBBBA funding,' they wrote, seeking a response by Aug. 22. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to The Associated Press that the department is in daily discussions with the committee 'to honor all briefing requests, including the spend plan for the funds allocated' through the new law. Advertisement 'ICE is indeed pursuing all available options to expand bedspace capacity,' she said. 'This process does include housing detainees at certain military bases, including Fort Bliss.' All together, it's what observers on and off Capitol Hill see as a fundamental shift in immigration policy — enabling DHS to reach far beyond the US southern border and deep into communities to conduct raids and stand up detention facilities as holding camps for immigrants. The Defense Department, the Internal Revenue Service, and other agencies are being enlisted in what Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, calls a 'whole of government' approach. 'They're orienting this huge shift,' Bush-Joseph said, as deportation enforcement moves 'inward.' The flood of cash comes when Americans' At the same time, Trump's Advertisement Detention centers are being stood up, from Homan has insisted in recent interviews that those being detained and deported are the 'worst of the worst,' and he dismissed as 'garbage' the reports showing many of those being removed have not committed violations beyond their irregular immigration status. 'There's no safe haven here,' Homan said recently outside the White House. 'We're going to do exactly what President Trump has promised the American people he'd do.' Back in February, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Republican chairman of the Budget Committee, emerged from their private meeting saying Trump administration officials were As Graham got to work, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and a leading deficit hawk, proposed an alternative border package, at $39 billion, a fraction of the size. But Paul's proposal was quickly dismissed. He was among a handful of GOP lawmakers who joined all Democrats in voting against the final tax and spending cuts bill.
Washington Post
38 minutes ago
- Washington Post
What Trump's D.C. police takeover means
President Donald Trump stands alongside Attorney General Pam Bondi during a news conference to announce that he is deploying National Guard troops and putting the Washington police force under federal control to tackle crime in the U.S. capital. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP) On Monday morning, President Donald Trump announced that he is putting Washington, D.C., under federal control and deploying the National Guard to fight crime. While police data shows a drop in violent crime in D.C. in recent years, Trump said this historic action would 'rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.' He suggested he could deploy the National Guard in other cities as well, referencing the deployment of Guard troops in Los Angeles earlier this year. Host Colby Itkowitz speaks with local reporter Olivia George about this unprecedented move to militarize Washington, D.C.; how some of the city's residents are already protesting; and what this deployment could mean for cities across America. Today's show was produced by Sabby Robinson, with help from Laura Benshoff and Rennie Svirnovskiy. It was edited by Reena Flores and mixed by Sam Bair. Subscribe to The Washington Post here.
