DHS memo offers new guidance on terminating status of international students
AUSTIN (KXAN) — An internal U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo filed in court this week indicates what could be new guidance for when an international student can have their legal status terminated, though the policy has not been published in the official journal of the federal government, which shows agency rules and public notices.
The change in guidance comes after ICE abruptly terminated the status of thousands of international students from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS — a database that tracks the minute-to-minute status of international students attending schools and participating in job training in the United States.
Last week, after nearly 100 lawsuits were filed challenging the terminations, the federal government informed federal judges through a statement that it would reactivate the SEVIS records for thousands of students it had terminated from the system in recent weeks. Some universities, including the University of Texas at Austin, indicated that some students have had their visas reactivated in the SEVIS database.
The filing from the federal government said, in part, “ICE is developing a policy that will provide a framework for SEVIS record terminations. Until such a policy is issued, the SEVIS records for plaintiff(s) in this case (and other similarly situated plaintiffs) will remain Active or shall be re-activated if not currently active and ICE will not modify the record solely based on the NCIC finding that resulted in the recent SEVIS record termination.”
“That lasted about 24 hours over the weekend. We got updates saying that ICE was deleting the sentence about ‘we will not revoke or terminate SEVIS terminations for the same reasons’,” according to Denver-based immigration attorney Brian Green. “It makes it sound like they’re going to re-terminate some of those people again for the same reasons… It’s a changing landscape basically every day.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to KXAN’s questions about the new guidance or the SEVIS terminations.
The new guidance, dated April 26, appears to expand the reasons why a student’s legal status can be terminated in SEVIS. The policy states that the Student Exchange and Visitor Program, or SEVP, can terminate a student’s record in SEVIS if the state department revokes their visa.
“It’s not clear at this point if this is the new policy that they promised, because it hasn’t been broadcast to the schools. So, we are still kind of trying to figure out what exactly that means, and there are some concerns about the new claims that the government is making in that document,” Maryland-based immigration attorney Anna Stepanova said.
KXAN confirmed that at least 104 international students based in Texas had visas revoked or had their immigration status marked as terminated in SEVIS in recent weeks. Our reporting partner, the Texas Tribune, reports the number is at least 252 statewide. KXAN has reached out to universities across the state to independently verify those numbers.
Green is currently representing more than 30 students across the country who were deleted from SEVIS, including six people based in Texas.
According to Green, all the individuals deleted from the system appear to have had some interaction with law enforcement during their time in the U.S., which was recorded in the National Crime Information Center database.
The offenses, according to Green and other immigration attorneys, range from traffic citations to more serious crimes like driving under the influence. In some cases, immigration attorneys say charges were never filed or were dropped.
Stepanova said none of the cases she is aware of meet the current law’s criteria for a status violation.
“The law is very specific. It has to be a conviction for a crime of violence for which a term of imprisonment should be one year or more,” Stepanova said.
Green said his clients got notice in early April that they had been terminated from the system. Along with a message saying, “Individual identified in criminal records check and/or has a visa revoked.”
His lawsuit, filed on behalf of 23 international students, argues that the termination was “unlawful,” violated the students’ Fifth Amendment rights to due process and put them at risk of “abrupt detention” without prior notice.
Court records indicate that the six Texas-based international students represented in the lawsuit had recently graduated and were completing their Optional Practical Training, or OPT, which allows eligible international students on F-1 visas to temporarily work in the United States in a field related to their studies.
DHS Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said in a press release that it would “consider aliens’ antisemitic activity on social media and the physical harassment of Jewish individuals as grounds for denying immigration benefit requests.”
“There is no room in the United States for the rest of the world’s terrorist sympathizers, and we are under no obligation to admit them or let them stay here,” DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said.
“They’re reinstating 4,700 people in the SEVIS system. Maybe those people will be terminated again in a week or two. There’s a lot of stress on a lot of students right now,” Green said. “Foreign students are really upset and worried about what is going to happen to them.”
KXAN’s Digital Data Reporter Christopher Adams contributed to this report.
