By MORIAH BALINGIT, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government has begun shedding new light on a crackdown on international students, spelling out how it targeted thousands of people and laying out the grounds for terminating their legal status.
The new details emerged in lawsuits filed by some of the students who suddenly had their status canceled in recent weeks with little explanation.
In the past month, foreign students around the U.S. have been rattled to learn their records had been removed from a student database maintained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some went into hiding for fear of being picked up by immigration authorities or abandoned their studies to return home.
On Friday, after mounting court challenges, federal officials said the government was restoring international students’ legal status while it developed a framework to guide future terminations. In a court filing Monday, it shared the new policy: a document issued over the weekend with guidance on a range of reasons students’ status can be canceled, including the revocation of the visas they used to enter the U.S.
Brad Banias, an immigration attorney representing a student whose status was terminated, said the new guidelines vastly expand ICE’s authority beyond previous policy, which did not count visa revocation as grounds for losing legal status.
“This just gave them carte blanche to have the State Department revoke a visa and then deport those students even if they’ve done nothing wrong,” Banias said.
Many of the students who had visas revoked or lost their legal status said they had only minor infractions on their record, including driving infractions. Some did not know why they were targeted at all.
Lawyers for the government provided some explanation at a hearing Tuesday in the case of Banias’ client Akshar Patel, an international student studying information systems in Texas. Patel’s status was terminated — and then reinstated — this…
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