The federal government is reversing the termination of legal status for international students after many filed court challenges around the US, a government lawyer said on Friday.
Judges around the country had already issued temporary orders restoring the students’ records in a federal database of international students maintained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
The records had been suddenly terminated in recent weeks, often without the students or their schools being notified.
A lawyer for the government read a statement in federal court in Oakland that said ICE was manually restoring the student status for people whose records were terminated in recent weeks.
A similar statement was read by a government lawyer in a separate case in Washington on Friday, said lawyer Brian Green, who represents the plaintiff in that case. Green provided Associated Press with a copy of the statement that the government lawyer emailed to him.
It says: “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 reactivated 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.”
