ACLU Sues Trump Admin Over Revocation of International Student Visas

Several hundred foreign students throughout the country have had their visas or legal status revoked.

A pedestrian walks along a path on the campus of Brown University in Providence, R.I., on Oct. 12, 2020. Steven Senne/AP Photo

Four American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) affiliates filed a lawsuit on April 18 asking a federal court to reinstate the legal status of international students who have had their visas revoked.

Multiple ACLU affiliates and the law firm Shaheen & Gordon filed a federal class action lawsuit, representing more than 100 foreign students in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico who they say had their F-1 student immigration status “unlawfully and abruptly terminated with no specified reason as to why.”

The students include several at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design who had their student status revoked in recent weeks. The lawsuit asks the court to reinstate their F-1 student status, which would allow them to continue their studies.

“International students are a vital community in our state’s universities, and no administration should be allowed to circumvent the law to unilaterally strip students of status, disrupt their studies, and put them at risk of deportation,” Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, said in a statement.

Several students have already sued, arguing that they were denied due process. In New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Montana, federal judges have granted temporary restraining orders to shield the students from deportation.

According to the April 18 lawsuit, which was filed in New Hampshire federal court, the affected students said they were not notified before their F-1 student statuses were canceled, opening them up to deportation and preventing them from finishing their studies.

The complaint states that one of the students, Manikanta Pasula of India, was close to finishing his master’s in computer science at Rivier University in New Hampshire and was set to apply for an international student work program that would allow him to stay in the United States.

Another student, Hangrui Zhang of China, was in a Ph.D. program in electronic and computer science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts and says he now can no longer work as a research assistant, his only income source, according to the complaint.

The lawyers representing the students said the government did not give the required advance notice, informing the foreign students that their legal status would be terminated.

On March 27, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department may have revoked more than 300 visas so far.

“Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa,” Rubio said.

He said that the reason is “because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus, we’re not going to give you a visa.”

Rubio said he is canceling visas for those who were acting in opposition to national interests, such as those who had supported the Hamas terrorist group or others facing criminal charges.

One high-profile case involved former Columbia University graduate student and activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was slated for deportation after he “led activities aligned to Hamas,” according to the Department of Homeland Security.