The federal government is reversing the termination of legal status for international students after many judicial challenges presented around the United States, a government lawyer said on Friday.
Judges from all over the country had already issued temporary orders restoring students’ records in a federal database of international students maintained by the application of immigration and customs of the United States, or ICE. The records had been suddenly finished in recent weeks, often without notifying students or their schools.
A government lawyer read a statement in a federal court in Oakland who said that ICE was manually restoring the students’ status for people whose records were completed in recent weeks. A government lawyer was read by a similar statement in a separate case in Washington on Friday, said lawyer Brian Green, who represents the plaintiff in that case. Green provided Associated Press a copy of the statement that the government lawyer sent an email.
He says: “ICE is developing a policy that will provide a framework for seis registration terminations. Until said policy is issued, sevis records for the plaintiff (s) in this case (and other plaintiffs located similarly) will remain active or will be reactivated if not currently and ICE will not modify the registration only based on the found NCIC that results in the recent Sevis record.”
Green said the government lawyer said it would apply to all students in the same situation, not only to those who had submitted demands.
Sevis is the database of information systems of student and exchange visitors that tracks the fulfillment of international students with their visa. NCIC is the National Crime Information Center, which maintains the FBI. Many of the students whose records were finished were told that their condition was completed as a result of a criminal record verification or that their visa had been revoked.
International students and their schools were surprised by the terminations of students’ records. Many of the terminations were discovered when school officials were doing routine controls from the International Student Database or when they specifically verified after listening to other terminations.
