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At a court hearing in Washington, D.C., Friday, the Trump administration temporarily restored the legal status of thousands of international students, and admitted that the mass termination of their immigration statuses was triggered by linking their immigration records to an FBI database tracking law enforcement encounters nationwide, regardless of how significant.
The news follows Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement that 300 students’ legal statuses were revoked over campus protests against the war in Gaza. Nevertheless, data on students who have been impacted shows that many of the 1,800 students swept up in the crackdown had no ties to the protests.
One student at a university in the south eastern part of the country had their legal status revoked over a traffic ticket, a source familiar with the information told Documented. He requested anonymity to protect the student’s privacy. In addition to contacting community activists and a member of Congress, the student reached out to a lawyer who was putting together a group action lawsuit specifically about students whose legal statuses had been revoked as a result of traffic infractions. According to the source, the student paid the lawyer to join the group action lawsuit, adding that the cost can vary between $1,000 and several thousand dollars depending on whether it is a group action or an individual case.
By Thursday, April 24, the student was notified by their school that their SEVIS status had been reinstated. A handful of other international students in the school were also affected. The student met with the school on April 25 and was told to “continue the program like nothing happened,” the source said.
U.S. immigration officials have warned that despite restoration, students could still face future terminations of their visas and status.
“[The student] is still worried,” the source said. “[They] understand that this may not be the end of it because, in this relief, the government was specific that it’s a temporary action for the time being and I think it’s the pressure coming from all the lawyers [in the lawsuits] that made the government do a temporary reversal.”
Other students in the U.S. were also trying to find solutions to their cases through several lawsuits filed last week. In Connecticut, Stephen Azu, a Ghanaian who earned a master’s degree at the University of Connecticut and was recently accepted into a Ph.D. program, was notified on April 9 that his immigration status was terminated. UConn’s Office of International Student & Scholar Services said DHS cited “OTHER: Individual identified in criminal records check and/or has had their VISA revoked. SEVIS record has been terminated” as the reason Azu’s student status was being revoked.
The attorneys in Azu’s lawsuit wrote that in 2022, Azu had been stopped for speeding while driving a drunk friend home. He had a valid driver’s license from Ghana, but was not carrying it. The following day, the judge confirmed that Stephen intended to get a U.S. license, which he immediately did, and asked Stephen to pay $100, which he also did, ending his interaction with the court. Other plaintiffs in the same lawsuit had similar grievances.
In Georgia, a group of 133 plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government for revoking their student status — which led to a court ruling in their favor on Wednesday. In that case, the court blocked the SEVIS record revocations of the plaintiffs, questioning the legality and arbitrariness of such revocations.
Judges in other states, such as Oregon, also issued temporary restraining orders that restored the statuses of two international students earlier last week. Likewise, federal judges in New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Montana and Washington state granted temporary restraining orders that protected students from being deported from the U.S. while they figured out their SEVIS status revocation cases.
In light of those lawsuits, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been forced to backtrack by restoring student statuses en masse. And following the results of Friday’s court hearing, the U.S. government began to dismiss similar lawsuits students had filed in court later that evening.
“As the Court may already be aware through the press and through reviewing similar SEVIS cases, on April 25, 2025, the government announced that ICE was restoring the SEVIS records of international students that had been terminated. This reactivation includes students that filed lawsuits as plaintiffs and students who did not file lawsuits — i.e. ICE’s reactivation of SEVIS records is independent of any particular civil litigation,” the U.S. government argued as they dismissed cases.
Students’ legal statuses are changed via the U.S. Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS, which tracks and monitors schools, exchange visitor programs, and people on F, M and J nonimmigrant status while they visit the U.S. and participate in the U.S. education system.
