On April 28, the University of Massachusetts Amherst announced on its Federal Actions page that “all 13 previously terminated UMass Amherst student immigration statuses have been restored by the federal government.”
With student statuses returned, the Justice Department and ICE claim that they are now working on new policy means to assess students with legal statuses revoked. Until that policy is taken into effect, all student legal status records “will remain active or shall be reactivated if not currently active,” according to information filed in court by the federal government.
Student legal statuses are different than student visas, because visas allow a student to study in the U.S. while legal statuses determine whether that person can remain in the country. However, additionally in that update, the niversity stated that “the impact on canceled visas remains unclear. The Office of Global Affairs and other offices are working with each of the 13 students on a case-by-case basis to advise on next steps.”
“NAFSA highlighted that the reversals relate only to SEVIS records terminated by ICE, rather than visa revocations, meaning that some students may have their status reactivated but still risk being denied re-entry into the US after international travel,” according to The PIE News.
This update follows the Justice Department’s announcement in federal court on April 25 for a wholesale reversal of the visa and legal status revocations. The decision was made to address the nationwide contention stating that “the mass termination of students from a federal database — used by universities and the federal government to track foreign students in the U.S. — as flagrantly illegal,” according to Politico, which is cited on the Federal Actions page’s April 25 update.
This database, the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), maintains information on non-immigrant students and exchange visitors in the United States and tracks whether international students are complying with the requirements to maintain their legal status. SEVIS also tracks schools’ disciplinary action against or any criminal charges filed against them.
Despite Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump Administration’s emphasis on terminating the visas and legal statuses of students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests last year, there was no known criterion for who was targeted in the past few weeks. Through SEVIS, began terminating hundreds of students’ records over any interaction with law enforcement, including minor disciplinary infractions.
These sweeping terminations were deemed unlawful by lawsuits across the country because they have no basis in federal regulation and violate the Fifth Amendment’s due process protections. None of the individuals who had their revoked were notified of an issue in advance and were given the opportunity to be heard in fair trial, including the UMass students.
Director of the UMass Department of Legal Studies Rebecca Hamlin said that the timing of these revocations to be during the middle of the semester and right before graduation for some, while not necessarily illegal, are abnormal and inconsistent with past and assumed practices.
“You can’t just revoke someone’s visa and separately their legal status to be in the United States without proper notice, without informing either the student or the university,” said. “It’s not how you’re not supposed to do it during the middle of the semester.”
These terminations are one of the many tools of the Trump administration to ramp up efforts to expel non-citizens from the U.S. Hamlin said that these efforts were precluded in his 2024 campaign, where he notably said that he wanted to deport 15-20 million people, despite there only being approximately 11 million undocumented individuals in the U.S.
“Instead of actually being able to make good on a campaign promise that was completely empty and unrealistic and never actually going to happen, what he’s doing is just opening fire,” Hamlin said. “And it’s pretty effective, because it keeps people living in fear. He’s not just doing that in student visa fear, he’s doing it with random raids on workplaces and attacking our undocumented community randomly.”
Bella Ishanyan can be reached at [email protected].
