Universities Told Students to Leave the Country. ICE Just Said They Didn't Actually Have To.

The Intercept

17-04-2025

The Department of Homeland Security said this week in a Michigan court that the agency does not have the authority to terminate students' immigration statuses by terminating their records in the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System. Known as SEVIS, the database allows both universities and authorities to track information about international students on visas in U.S.
Homeland Security's changes to SEVIS, the Trump administration said, have no bearing on a student's lawful nonimmigrant status.
'Terminating a record in SEVIS does not terminate an individual's nonimmigrant status in the United States,' said Andre Watson, assistant director of the national security division for Homeland Security Investigations, in the filing. Watson added that existing laws and regulations 'do not provide' the DHS-run Student Exchange and Visitor Program 'the authority to terminate nonimmigrant status by terminating a SEVIS record.'
This will be news to many hundreds of students who have had their SEVIS records terminated by DHS in recent weeks — and were then told by their schools or the government that they have thus lost their immigration status and must immediately leave the country.
'Under pressure from ICE, schools have been advising students they are out of status after SEVIS record termination, and in many cases disenrolling them as a result,' said Nathan Yaffe, an attorney representing international students facing deportation in other cases. 'Now ICE has submitted sworn declarations that SEVIS record termination has no legal effect on the student whatsoever.'
'Disenrolling students was already a blatant capitulation, and now it is a wholly inexcusable one.'
Based on school officials checking their SEVIS records, hundreds of students have been led to believe that they had lost their student immigration status because a terminated record in the database is broadly taken to mean a student has fallen out of status.
The DHS's latest claims to the contrary in court are sure to only sow further confusion, but they are strong grounds, Yaffe said, for schools to immediately stop disenrolling students believed to be out of status due to SEVIS record checks.
'Any school that continues to disenroll (and refuses to re-enroll) students is voluntarily punishing students to align itself with the Trump administration's agenda,' Yaffe said. 'Disenrolling students was already a blatant capitulation, and now it is a wholly inexcusable one.'
The DHS declaration was filed in response to a lawsuit brought by four Michigan students, who are suing the Trump administration over the reported loss of their F-1 student statuses. In response, the government argued that the case should be thrown out, since DHS did not remove the students' statuses when it terminated their SEVIS records.
According to Inside Higher Ed, 16 lawsuits from at least 50 students have challenged the Trump administration over visa revocations and deportation threats. A number of the suits have challenged DHS's authority to summarily change students' statuses on SEVIS. It was only for the first time in the Michigan case, however, that the government said that its SEVIS interventions had no bearing on a student's status.
The admission was an apparent effort by the government to dodge legal challenges. The students are suing to have their legal student immigration status restored, and the government is suggesting that their SEVIS terminations never changed the students' statuses, so the agency cannot be sued for its actions. Communications from government agencies and school administrations, however, have up until this point taken a SEVIS termination to mean that a student's status is terminated too.
In an email sent by a school official at the University of Michigan to one of the Michigan plaintiffs, for example, the student was told, 'In our daily review of SEVIS, we learned that your SEVIS record was 'terminated' by a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official.' The school official continued: 'We do not have any additional information, but this termination means you no longer hold valid F-1 status within the United States. You will need to cease any employment immediately. Since this termination does not carry a grace period, we must recommend you make plans to exit the United States immediately.'
The government's defense in court, however, claimed the direct opposite, noting in a filing: 'There are no legal consequences to the termination of a SEVIS record.'
The University of Michigan and Wayne State University — the two schools attended by plaintiffs in the Michigan lawsuit — did not respond to The Intercept's request for comment, nor did DHS, ICE, the State Department, and the Department of Justice, which represents the administration in court.
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A student plaintiff in another, similar case filed in California received an email directly from the State Department, informing them that their student visa had been revoked. The email fails to distinguish in any meaningful way between visa status and legal immigration status, which are not the same thing. In one paragraph, the State Department tells the student that their visa has been 'revoked under Section 221(i) of the United States Immigration and Nationality Act.'
The email later notes, 'Remaining in the United States without a lawful immigration status can result in fines, detention, and/or deportation' — without informing the student that they may very well still have lawful immigration status.
'Given the gravity of this situation, individuals whose visa was revoked may wish to demonstrate their intent to depart the United States using the CBP Home App,' the State Department email told the student.
Ranjani Srinivasan, a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University fled to Canada in March after being targeted by ICE. After DHS terminated her SEVIS status, Srinivasan wrote in a statement that Columbia 'arbitrarily de-enrolled' her, ending her 'legal status, worker status, and housing.' She blamed 'ICE threats and Columbia complicity' for her decision to flee.
The Homeland Security website, which offers official guidance on international student rules and regulations, suggests that a terminated record indicates that the student's legal status has been terminated too. The site notes that a terminated record in SEVIS means that a student 'loses all on- and/or off-campus employment authorization,' 'cannot re-enter the United States on the terminated SEVIS record,' and that ICE agents may investigate to 'confirm the departure of the student.'
DHS also says that a terminated record 'could indicate that the nonimmigrant no longer maintains' their legal status, but that it is 'designated school officials,' rather than ICE and other DHS agents who 'mostly terminate' these records.
The State Department has been removing student visas en masse. Over 1,200 student visas have been revoked, almost entirely from nonwhite students, since President Donald Trump announced plans to target international students, particularly those who have expressed support for Palestinian freedom.
The removal of a student visa, however, is not the same as, and does not entail, the removal of legal nonimmigrant status in the U.S. as a student.
A visa is required for an international student to legally enter the country to study here. After entering, however, the visa does not affect the student's immigration status. A student with an expired or revoked visa can remain in legal nonimmigrant student status while not leaving the country; a university has no legal reason to disenroll that student or prevent their continued study in the U.S..
The DHS declaration in Michigan went further in making the distinction between having a visa revoked and being eligible for deportation.
'Prudential visa revocation, absent other factors, does not make an individual amendable to removal,' wrote Watson, the HSI official.
That is, the revocation of a student visa is not, in and of itself, necessarily grounds for a student to be deported. Yet schools have been reacting to SEVIS terminations, not visa revocations, when they have disenrolled students or advised students to immediately leave the country.
This does not mean that the students currently targeted by Trump's administration are safe. A student in legal immigration status with a revoked visa is at significant risk should ICE seek to pursue deportation proceedings against them. The agency would have to send the student a notice to appear before an immigration judge, and there would be a hearing about the student's deportability, at which the student could challenge their visa revocation.
The process can be frightening for students, as the cases of detained legal permanent residents like Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi and visa holders like Rümeysa Öztürk make clear. The Trump administration has shown little compunction about taking the next step toward making individual students deportable, attempting to carry out the mass removal of students for minor legal violations, as well as for entirely legal political speech under spurious 'foreign policy' grounds and bunk charges of antisemitism.
In trying to stave off litigation, DHS has been clear in other cases that students who have had their visas revoked and SEVIS records terminated have not fallen out of legal status.
'The issue Plaintiffs seek to avoid is the real issue before this court: the State Department revoked Plaintiffs' visa,' the government argued in another case filed by students in Georgia, 'but those actions are un reviewable here.'
'Do you realize that this is Kafkaesque?'
The government is claiming that the students have directed their legal challenge at the wrong government agency, but that they also cannot sue the State Department, because the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is deploying to summarily remove visas 'expressly precludes visa revocations from judicial review.' According to the Trump administration the students could only challenge Rubio's wide and reckless discretion to revoke their visas 'in removal proceedings if the revocation is the sole basis for removal.'
Federal judges hearing students' cases around the country have so far not been impressed with the government's arguments. At least five federal courts have issued temporary restraining orders on deportation orders linked to SEVIS terminations. On Wednesday, District Court Judge Ana Reyes in Washington, D.C., specifically ordered DHS's Watson to testify in court over the claims in his declaration, which was also submitted by the government in the case filed by students there.
'I've got two experienced immigration lawyers on behalf of a client who is months away from graduation, who has done nothing wrong, who has been terminated from a system that you all keep telling me has no effect on his immigration status, although that clearly is BS,' Reyes told the government. 'And now, his two very experienced lawyers can't even tell him whether or not he's here legally, because the Court can't tell him whether or not he's here legally, because the government's counsel can't tell him if he's here legally.'
The judge said, 'Do you realize that this is Kafkaesque?'