Latest news with #StudentCriminalAlienInitiative
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's Mass Cancellation of Student Visas Illustrates the Lawlessness of His Immigration Crackdown
Last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) suddenly terminated about 4,700 records in the database of foreign students with F-1 visas authorizing them to attend American universities. That move, which sowed panic among students across the country, was the result of the Trump administration's "Student Criminal Alien Initiative." But contrary to the implication of that label, the initiative affected many people who had no criminal record that would justify revoking their visas. Nor did ICE cite any other specific justification listed in the relevant regulations. Instead, the students were told their records had been terminated for "otherwise failing to maintain status." Although ICE subsequently restored those records in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), they still included notations of the prior terminations. Those black marks, along with the possibility that ICE might reverse course again at any time, left thousands of students uncertain about whether they would be allowed to remain in the United States and complete their degrees. On Thursday, a federal judge in California issued a nationwide preliminary injunction that aims to rectify that situation, and his reasoning highlights the alarming legal shortcuts that characterize President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. The SEVIS controversy may seem arcane. But it illustrates several disturbing themes of Trump's deportation crusade, including his indiscriminate approach, disregard for due process, blatant flouting of statutory and constitutional requirements, shifting legal positions, and determination to avoid judicial review. The SEVIS terminations "reflect an instinct that has become prevalent in our society to effectuate change: move fast and break things," writes U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White, a George W. Bush appointee who is considering several lawsuits by foreign students in the Northern District of California. "That instinct must be checked when it conflicts with established principles of law." White's preliminary injunction bars the government from "arresting and incarcerating any of the named Plaintiffs in these cases and similarly situated individuals nationwide pending resolution of these proceedings." The injunction also says the government may not transfer any of those individuals "outside the jurisdiction of their residence," impose "any adverse legal effect" based on the SEVIS terminations, or "revers[e] the reinstatement" of the records. Explaining the rationale for a nationwide injunction, White says the plaintiffs "have met their burden to show a likelihood of irreparable harm." He "sees no rational distinction between the harms inflicted on the [named plaintiffs] and the harms inflicted on similarly situated individuals across the United States." He notes that "these cases and the litigation around the United States" stem from "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." The plaintiffs in the California lawsuits "allege Defendants violated the Due Process clause of the United States Constitution," White notes before alluding to the various ways in which the Trump administration, in its eagerness to summarily expel as many foreigners as possible, has disregarded due process. "Lest any Defendant be unsure," he archly adds, "that clause 'applies to all 'persons' within the United States, including aliens, whether their presence here is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent.'" White is quoting the Supreme Court's 2001 ruling in Zadvydas v. Davis, and he notes that the justices unanimously reaffirmed that principle last month in Trump v. J.G.G., which involved the president's attempt to deport suspected members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua under the Alien Enemies Act. "It is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in the context of removal proceedings," the Court noted in holding that alleged gang members had a right to contest their designation as "alien enemies" prior to deportation. The plaintiffs in the California cases also argue that the Student Criminal Alien Initiative violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which authorizes federal courts to "set aside" any agency action that is "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law." White notes that "the overwhelming majority of courts" considering lawsuits by students whose SEVIS records were terminated "have determined the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of the same claims presented here." It is not hard to see why. To implement the administration's initiative, ICE checked about 1.3 million student visa holders against a database maintained by the National Criminal Information Center (NCIC), which includes law enforcement contacts that did not necessarily result in charges, let alone convictions. ICE "forwarded lists of the individuals with positive results to the State Department for its consideration," White notes. "After the State Department received these lists, it took approximately fifteen minutes to decide that all records in SEVIS relating to those names should be terminated." As White notes, the lists included students who "had some contact with law enforcement" but did not have "a conviction that would cause them to fail to maintain status" under 8 CFR 214.1(g), which disqualifies people who commit "a crime of violence for which a sentence of more than one year imprisonment may be imposed." He mentions several plaintiffs in these cases who had no criminal record at all. According to testimony by Andre Watson, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official, "the only individualized assessment made was whether an individual identified who had a positive result in the NCIC database was an individual listed within the SEVIS database," White writes. He says the plaintiffs therefore "are likely to prevail on their claim that the decision to terminate their SEVIS records was arbitrary and capricious because the decision was not based on a 'rational connection between the facts found and the choice made.'" Another regulation, 8 CFR 214.1(d), lists three additional circumstances in which "the nonimmigrant status of an alien shall be terminated," none of which applies here. "Because the record also shows that Defendants did not rely on one of the three circumstances set forth" in that provision, White says, "the Court also concludes Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that Defendants' actions are contrary to law." The government asserted, contrary to what the plaintiffs claimed, that terminating the SEVIS records was not tantamount to revoking the corresponding student visas. "Defendants have argued that the termination was merely a 'red flag' and that terminating a SEVIS record has no impact on immigration status," White notes. He "joins the growing number of courts around the United States [that] have rejected this position." DHS "advises the public that when a SEVIS record is terminated for failing to maintain status" the visa holder "loses all on- and/or off-campus employment authorization" and "cannot re-enter the United States" after traveling abroad, White notes. The department says a termination also cancels visas for the student's dependents. It adds that ICE agents "may investigate to confirm the departure of the student." By the government's own account, in other words, a student whose SEVIS record is terminated loses the privileges associated with his visa, including permission to remain in the United States. That understanding, White says, is confirmed by an April 2025 "notice of intent to deny" a student's application for an H-1B "temporary worker" visa. According to "the beneficiary's SEVIS record," U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in that notice, "their F-1 nonimmigrant status was terminated on April 10, 2025 because of the criminal records check and the revocation of their F-1 visa." White adds that "the State Department describes a SEVIS record as 'the definitive record of student or exchange visitor status and visa eligibility.'" In short, he says, there is "ample evidence that 'DHS officials and agencies…construe a student's SEVIS record as the equivalent of his actual F-1 student status." The government also argued that ICE had eliminated any harm caused by its SEVIS terminations when it restored those records. But while the defendants "have reactivated Plaintiffs' SEVIS records retroactively," White notes, "they claim it is technologically impossible to both remove the fact of termination from those records and to issue public-facing statements within SEVIS about the effect of the reactivation." And although the government says it is "sending letters to every F-1 nonimmigrant whose SEVIS record was terminated to address those concerns and to provide them with supporting documentation," he adds, "the letter contains no representations that it will be binding on Defendants," and "the erroneous notations remain in Plaintiffs' records." For those reasons, White says, the plaintiffs "have shown they have and will continue to suffer significant hardship because of Defendants' actions. Unlike the letter Defendants intend to send, the relief the Court grants provides Plaintiffs with 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." White notes that the government "abruptly reversed course" at an April 25 hearing in these cases, saying "ICE had begun to reinstate SEVIS records and would develop a new policy for terminating SEVIS records going forward." The next day, the government's lawyers told White that ICE "has issued a new policy concerning the termination of records." The new policy, White notes, included two reasons for termination that "are not included on DHS's website": "Evidence of a Failure to Comply with the Terms of Nonimmigrant Status Exists" and "U.S. Department of State Visa Revocation." At a May 14 hearing, White says, the government "advised the Court of yet another new development." It said that "ICE is restoring SEVIS records retroactively to the date the records were terminated" and that the government would send explanatory letters to all of the affected students. Those shifts "since these cases were filed" suggest the Trump administration "may be trying to place any future SEVIS terminations beyond judicial review," White writes. "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." The post Trump's Mass Cancellation of Student Visas Illustrates the Lawlessness of His Immigration Crackdown appeared first on
San Francisco Chronicle
23-05-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Bay Area judge bars Trump from revoking visas for thousands of international students
A Bay Area federal judge barred the Trump administration on Thursday from revoking the visas of thousands of international students at U.S. colleges, saying the government had provided no evidence that the students were breaking the law or posed any danger to the public. Other judges have ruled that immigration officials in President Donald Trump's administration acted illegally in seeking to terminate the legal status of students holding F-1 visas, which allow them to remain in the United States while in college or postgraduate training programs. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White of Oakland said the injunction he issued Thursday is the first nationwide order, affecting as many as 6,400 students. Trump's visa revocation program, labeled the Student Criminal Alien Initiative, has 'uniformly wreaked havoc' on the lives of students in California and elsewhere, the appointee of President George W. Bush said in his ruling. White said his order provides the students '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.' Under federal law, F-1 visas can be revoked if a student falls far behind in college, engages in unauthorized employment, lies to immigration officials or commits a violent crime. White said none of the students who sued in his court violated any of those standards. Instead, he said, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ran the names of nearly 1.3 million visa holders through its database and came up with 6,400 students who had had some contact with law enforcement but no disqualifying criminal convictions — one current plaintiff, for example, had no criminal record but had unknowingly enrolled in a university involved in a 'sting' operation. Federal officials then told those students that they were 'failing to maintain status' and their records would be terminated in the Student and Visitor Exchange Program, which monitors foreign students. Lawyers for the Trump administration told White that the notice was merely a 'red flag' and would not affect the students' immigration status, but the judge disagreed. When the government takes such an action, White said, a student loses all work authorization, on or off-campus, and ICE agents 'may investigate to confirm the departure of the student.' Immigration officials have recently taken steps to restore some of the students' records that made them eligible for visas. But White said they have also announced that their action would remain in effect 'until a new policy was implemented' — evidence, he said, that a court order is the students' only legal protection. The government's actions 'reflect an instinct that has become prevalent in our society to effectuate change: move fast and break things.' White said. 'That instinct must be checked when it conflicts with established principles of law.' A lawyer for the students said the Trump administration 'realized they had done something completely illegal and tried to walk it back, but they didn't go far enough, and the court realized that.' 'We're happy for the students,' said attorney Marc Van Der Hout, who represented the plaintiffs along with his law partner, Johnny Sinodis. 'We hope this teaches this administration a lesson that courts will step in to stop outrageous actions.'
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump administration reveals how it targeted thousands of international students on visas
After thousands of international students abruptly lost their legal statuses in the past few months, the Department of Homeland Security offered some insight Tuesday into how some of the terminations were decided. At a court hearing in Washington about the recent targeting of many international students across the country, the department said it used 10 to 20 employees to run the names of 1.3 million foreign-born students through the National Crime Information Center, an FBI-run computerized index that includes criminal history information. The process populated the 6,400 'hits.' And from there, many students experienced terminations of their records in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), which maintains information about nonimmigrant students and exchange visitors. In the hearing, the federal government detailed its initiative to screen foreign students entitled the 'Student Criminal Alien Initiative.' Andre Watson, assistant director of DHS said that the employees served in 'various roles as analysts' and that the entire process, overseen by DHS acting Executive Director Robert Hammer, took two to three weeks. Names were sent to the State Department, Watson said, and roughly 3,000 students had their visas revoked. The State Department then instructed DHS to terminate the students' SEVIS records. Elizabeth D. Kurlan, an attorney for the Justice Department, said last week during a hearing in the Northern District of California in Oakland that going forward, ICE will not be terminating statuses based solely on findings in the crime information center. While Watson said that DHS had conducted similar searches in the past for specific students during his four years there, the agency had not done so to this magnitude. The Trump administration began revoking the visas of some thousands of international students in addition to their records and legal statuses in March. Critics said that the terminations appeared to take aim at those who've participated in political activism or have criminal charges against them, like DUIs. But for weeks, questions remained over the criteria the government used to terminate visas and statuses, with little to no notice to students. For immigration attorneys and policy experts, the revelation has been concerning. 'Using tech to achieve immigration enforcement goals seems like a bad science fiction movie, but it's the situation we are living in now,' Jath Shao, a Cleveland-based immigration attorney who represents several students dealing with these terminations. 'It should concern all Americans, because these tools used against subsets of immigrants could be turned against any group.' Shao said that while the new developments aren't surprising, they do invite questions over the process' thoroughness. A group of 10 employees, Shao said, is not enough to check the massive quantity of international students' records. And solely going through names creates the potential for major mistakes, he said. 'There can be so many variations of your name depending on various IDs and things like that,' Shao said. 'There's a risk of false positives, especially if your name is Mohammed or Juan — something very common — it's going to be high.' Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an attorney and policy analyst with the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, also said that the National Crime Information Center may not have the most up-to-date information. The index relies on cities, counties, states and other sources to voluntarily report their data. And sometimes the database doesn't have the final dispositions of cases, Bush-Joseph said. So actually scanning someone's background for a criminal record often takes extra digging. Many immigration attorneys, including Shao, have worked with students who had charges dismissed or won their cases in the past and were never convicted. Suguru Onda, a doctoral student at Brigham Young University in Utah, for example, had a 2019 fishing-related citation on his record that was eventually dismissed. His legal status was terminated a few weeks ago because he was 'identified in criminal records check and/or has had their VISA revoked,' government officials told him in a notice. Onda's status has since been restored. 'Technology made this happen. Technology facilitated this fast process. But at the same time, it shows the limitations of the technology,' Bush-Joseph said. Shao said that the use of government databases for immigration purposes is already stoking fear among even U.S. citizens, who worry that their information could be weaponized against them. 'People are very afraid to sign their names for anything now, even on the sponsor side,' Shao said. 'It's scary, not just for students.' This article was originally published on
NBC News
30-04-2025
- Politics
- NBC News
Trump administration reveals how it targeted thousands of international students on visas
After thousands of international students abruptly lost their legal statuses in the past few months, the Department of Homeland Security offered some insight Tuesday into how some of the terminations were decided. At a court hearing in Washington about the recent targeting of many international students across the country, the department said it used 10 to 20 employees to run the names of 1.3 million foreign-born students through the National Crime Information Center, an FBI-run computerized index that includes criminal history information. The process populated the 6,400 'hits.' And from there, many students experienced terminations of their records in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), which maintains information about nonimmigrant students and exchange visitors. In the hearing, the federal government detailed its initiative to screen foreign students entitled the 'Student Criminal Alien Initiative.' Andre Watson, assistant director of DHS said that the employees served in 'various roles as analysts' and that the entire process, overseen by DHS acting Executive Director Robert Hammer, took two to three weeks. Names were sent to the State Department, Watson said, and roughly 3,000 students had their visas revoked. The State Department then instructed DHS to terminate the students' SEVIS records. Elizabeth D. Kurlan, an attorney for the Justice Department, said last week during a hearing in the Northern District of California in Oakland that going forward, ICE will not be terminating statuses based solely on findings in the crime information center. While Watson said that DHS had conducted similar searches in the past for specific students during his four years there, the agency had not done so to this magnitude. The Trump administration began revoking the visas of some thousands of international students in addition to their records and legal statuses in March. Critics said that the terminations appeared to take aim at those who've participated in political activism or have criminal charges against them, like DUIs. But for weeks, questions remained over the criteria the government used to terminate visas and statuses, with little to no notice to students. For immigration attorneys and policy experts, the revelation has been concerning. 'Using tech to achieve immigration enforcement goals seems like a bad science fiction movie, but it's the situation we are living in now,' Jath Shao, a Cleveland-based immigration attorney who represents several students dealing with these terminations. 'It should concern all Americans, because these tools used against subsets of immigrants could be turned against any group.' Shao said that while the new developments aren't surprising, they do invite questions over the process' thoroughness. A group of 10 employees, Shao said, is not enough to check the massive quantity of international students' records. And solely going through names creates the potential for major mistakes, he said. 'There can be so many variations of your name depending on various IDs and things like that,' Shao said. 'There's a risk of false positives, especially if your name is Mohammed or Juan — something very common — it's going to be high.' Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an attorney and policy analyst with the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, also said that the National Crime Information Center may not have the most up-to-date information. The index relies on cities, counties, states and other sources to voluntarily report their data. And sometimes the database doesn't have the final dispositions of cases, Bush-Joseph said. So actually scanning someone's background for a criminal record often takes extra digging. Many immigration attorneys, including Shao, have worked with students who had charges dismissed or won their cases in the past and were never convicted. Suguru Onda, a doctoral student at Brigham Young University in Utah, for example, had a 2019 fishing-related citation on his record that was eventually dismissed. His legal status was terminated a few weeks ago because he was 'identified in criminal records check and/or has had their VISA revoked,' government officials told him in a notice. Onda's status has since been restored. 'Technology made this happen. Technology facilitated this fast process. But at the same time, it shows the limitations of the technology,' Bush-Joseph said. Shao said that the use of government databases for immigration purposes is already stoking fear among even U.S. citizens, who worry that their information could be weaponized against them. 'People are very afraid to sign their names for anything now, even on the sponsor side,' Shao said. 'It's scary, not just for students.'
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Feds reveal how immigration squad targeted thousands of foreign students
A botched effort by the Trump administration to raise red flags about thousands of foreign students studying in the United States began with a rushed project by immigration officials dubbed the 'Student Criminal Alien Initiative,' according to new details revealed in court Tuesday. Beginning in March, as many as 20 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, aided by contractors, ran 1.3 million names of foreign students through a federal database that tracks criminal histories, missing persons and other brushes with the law. The search found about 6,400 'hits' that officials concluded were solid matches for names and other biographical details in the students' records, Homeland Security officials said during a hearing. But many of those hits flagged students who had minor interactions with police — arrests for reckless driving, DUIs and misdemeanors, with charges often dropped or never brought at all — far short of the legal standard required to revoke a student's legal ability to study in the U.S. Nevertheless, ICE officials used that data to 'terminate' the students' records in an online database schools and ICE use to track student visa holders in the U.S. Those terminations led schools to bar students from attending classes — some just weeks from graduation — and warn that they could be at risk of immediate deportation. The action spawned more than 100 lawsuits, resulting in dozens of restraining orders issued by judges across the country, who called the effort unlawful. On Friday, with more legal pain looming, the administration reversed the terminations and said it was drafting a new policy to vet foreign students in the U.S. But Tuesday's hearing revealed the hurried nature of the overall effort. Hundreds of the terminations, an ICE official who helped oversee the effort said, came less than 24 hours after an April 1 email exchange between his office and the State Department, with little sign of review of individual cases to ensure the decisions were accurate. In addition, the State Department relied on the data to revoke the visas of 3,000 people. 'When the courts say due process is important, we're not unhinged, we're not radicals,' U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said during an hourlong hearing. 'I'm not on a lark questioning why students who have been here legally, who paid to be in this country by paying their universities … they're cut off with less than 24 hours of consideration and no notice whatsoever.' ICE and Justice Department officials described the ill-fated, resource-intensive effort under pressure by Reyes. The Biden-appointed judge used Tuesday's hearing to elicit as many specifics as possible about the administration's effort to target foreign students admitted to the country on so-called F-1 visas. Once admitted, those students are tracked in an ICE database known as the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System, or SEVIS. Andre Watson, an official with ICE's Counter Threat Lead Development Unit, said the purpose of terminating the student SEVIS registrations was not necessarily to prompt the foreign nationals to leave the U.S., but as a 'red flag' to trigger further scrutiny by government agencies or universities. But Reyes noted that no part of the program involved giving the affected students notice so they could explain their situations and avoid unnecessary consequences. The schools involved appear to have been given cursory reasons for the terminations, such as vague references to a criminal records check or students being 'out of status.' And internal records revealed in court underscored the hasty nature of the process. After the State Department proposed revoking 3,000 visas, ICE weighed whether to focus its SEVIS terminations on those same 3,000 people. 'Please terminate all,' responded an official identified in court papers as a 'division chief' in DHS' Homeland Security Investigations. After more than a week of vague responses in court from government lawyers about the immigration status of those students whose records were terminated, Justice Department attorney Johnny Walker said being booted from SEVIS did not mean that students had to leave the U.S. immediately. But he acknowledged that some universities might require those students to stop going to classes. 'That's up to the school,' Walker said. Lawyers for the students have noted that failure to attend classes can put someone out of legal immigration status and be grounds for deportation. Reyes at one point derided the effort as 'the non-process process.' She said the Trump administration had other options than simply terminating the students in the system and waiting to see what happens. 'You could have sent a letter to all these universities and said, 'Those people have come up on a hit, you may want to check them out,'' the judge said. Even after the hearing, it remained unclear how deeply DHS officials examined the reasons students had 'hits' in the federal criminal justice database run by the National Crime Information Center, or NCIC. The University of Wisconsin student who brought the suit that led to Tuesday's hearing, Akshar Patel, had faced a reckless driving charge but it was ultimately dismissed. 'Each record was scrutinized based on the criminal history,' Watson said. 'If we deported every single individual in this country who's been tagged for speeding there'd be very few people left,' Reyes said. 'You and I both know Mr. Patel is not a criminal, right? And anyone looking at the record would know that he's not a criminal.' Reyes said it was stunning that federal employees were diverted for weeks onto the labor-intensive project, just as the Trump administration was seeking to fire huge swaths of the federal workforce. 'It still boggles my mind that we're firing tens of thousands of federal workers on no notice and then take 10 or 20 of them to run a bunch of names through a database to see if they're still students, if they have a speeding record,' the judge said. 'You know, not my call.' A State Department spokesperson did not provide any information on changes to their vetting practices or statistics about visa revocations, but said they 'happen on an ongoing basis.' The State Department 'will continue to work closely with the Department of Homeland Security to enforce zero tolerance for aliens in the United States who violate U.S. laws, threaten public safety, or in other situations where warranted,' the spokesperson said. A spokesperson for DHS did not respond to a request for comment.
