Federal officials have restored the legal status of 13 international University of Massachusetts Amherst students.
Immigration officials had terminated their student immigration statuses in a database known as SEVIS earlier this month. They were told through email they had to leave the country.
SEVIS tracks the status of students and visitors who enter the U.S. legally. It’s different from a visa – even if a visa is revoked, a person can still be considered in the country legally if that’s how they’re classified in the database.
Some UMass students also had their visas revoked, school officials said; it is unclear whether those will be reinstated.
Over the last few weeks more than a thousand international students nationwide suddenly had their legal status terminated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a move that spurred nearly a hundred lawsuits and widespread confusion.
Some terminations appeared to stem from minor legal infractions like traffic citations uncovered by background checks.
UMass Amherst Chancellor Javier Reyes said the school was caught off guard by their students’ initial status revocations, and only noticed the changes by proactively checking the SEVIS database.
At a court hearing on Friday, lawyers with the federal government said the SEVIS record restorations are temporary, and that immigration officials are working to establish a framework to formally terminate records from SEVIS.
It’s not clear what that means for the students whose status were restored, and whether they will be targeted again once a new policy is established.
The database terminations were just one of many steps the Trump administration has taken to ramp up efforts to expel noncitizens – including those with and without legal status, NPR reported.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also said he has revoked hundreds of visas, many for students who participated in pro-Palestinian campus protests last year.
