Judge blocks US govt from ending legal status of foreign students

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from terminating the legal status of international students to stay in the US.

This order, issued by the US District Judge Jeffrey White, on Thursday, prevents the government from terminating the legal status of foreign students while a court case challenging the previous terminations was pending.

This directive delivered a significant setback to the administration’s attempts to crack down on international students as part of President Donald Trump’s broader deportation effort.

According to CNN, the case concerns an attempt by the administration to tamper with SEVIS records of students, putting them at risk of deportation.

The SEVIS database stands for the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, and it is a system used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to track and monitor international students and exchange visitors.

In the last months, several International students have had their visas revoked or legal status terminated.

PREMIUM TIMES earlier reported that about 600 international students in over 90 colleges and universities have been affected. Some of the students had taken the government to court. Although thousands of Nigerian students are studying in the US, there are no indications that any Nigerian student has, so far, been affected by the actions.

While many courts have granted protection to individual foreign students who sued the administration, the San Francisco district judge’s order goes further. It blocks the federal government from arresting, detaining, or moving students and others across the country while similar cases are still being decided.

According to the judge, the students were likely to succeed in their claim that the actions violated federal rule-making procedure and were arbitrary.

Although the administration backed down from the move last month after facing several legal challenges, Mr White, in his ruling, said it wasn’t far-fetched to believe that, without a clear directive stopping them, they might try something similar again.

The administration’s actions, the judge wrote, “uniformly wreaked havoc not only on the lives of pllaintiffs here but on similarly situated F-1 nonimmigrants across the United States and continue to do so.

“I do not find it speculative to conclude that, in the absence of an injunction, the administration would abruptly re-terminate SEVIS records without notice.”

“Defendants do not suggest that these individuals pose an immediate safety threat or that they pose a threat to national security,” he wrote.

“In contrast, Plaintiffs have shown that Defendants likely exceeded their authority and acted arbitrarily and capriciously in those enforcement efforts, and the ‘public interest is served by compliance with the (Administrative Procedure Act).”

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This development comes shortly after the US government announced that it was ending Harvard University’s ability to enrol international students by revoking its Student and Exchange Visitor Programme certification.

By doing so, existing international students at the university must transfer or lose their legal status to reside in the US before the next academic year begins.