Trump administration reverses course, restores international student status to Penn affiliates and others

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Earlier this month, the Trump administration abruptly terminated the student status of more than 1,000 international students around the country, including at the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University and Rutgers University. But now the government has reversed itself and restored status for some, including three at the University of Pennsylvania and eight at the University of Delaware, as confirmed by university spokespeople.

The University of Delaware spokesperson said their staff will contact the people affected, help them with next steps, and closely monitor any updates to student records.

There are more than 1 million international students in the U.S., and the government went after a small group of them. Lawyers say what these cases had in common is that the students had some minor run-ins with the law, which they say are the equivalent of traffic tickets and have never had any bearing on student status.

In response, students filed dozens of lawsuits against the government in states around the country, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In most of them, judges issued temporary restraining orders against the government, ordering it to restore student status.

Chris Casazza, an experienced immigration lawyer in Philadelphia, sued the government on behalf of two Indian students at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania, and successfully convinced a judge to file a restraining order and restore his clients’ status. He said the news of other students getting their status restored today means the federal government is retreating, for now.

“I think that they saw that they couldn’t win in the way that they were doing this, but I’m concerned that they’re just going to regroup and they’re going to try and come back after these students in a different way,” Casazza said.

He said that though the new development makes his clients’ case moot, it has already made them fearful and anxious, at one point so scared that they were afraid to leave their homes and go to class, even after years of studying in the U.S.

“They went from a position of being in a perfectly lawful status that they had obeyed for many, many years and followed the rules and regulations for, to simply receiving an email one day stating that they may get arrested, detained and deported,” Casazza said.

Earlier this week, a State Department spokesperson said the department “revokes visas every day in order to secure America’s borders and keep our communities safe — and will continue to do so.”

Matthew Hirsch, a longtime immigration lawyer in Philadelphia, calls that a “spurious and specious excuse” for the government’s actions.

He said that even with today’s reversal, the damage to international students has already been done. One Temple student chose to leave the U.S. and will have to apply for a new visa to return.

He called the government’s actions “the most arbitrary of actions to terminate the status of students just because they had a reckless driving ticket, or driving without insurance, or a DUI charge which has been dismissed, or any other contact with law enforcement even as a victim or a witness of a crime. There was no reason to do this and they did it anyway.”

Despite the chaos, international students should know that every situation is different, said Jonathan Grode, a lead attorney at immigration law firm Green and Spiegel.

“Don’t assume because something is happening to somebody you know, that it’s also going to happen to you,” he said. “That’s what goes for these people who are afraid right now, who are concerned about their own personal status, but may have not gotten a notice of revocation from the government.”

Hirsch said that if students are worried, they can turn to advisors at the schools, vetted lists of law firms that schools provide international students, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“We recognize that in many cases they’ve been terrified and traumatized,” Hirsch said. “They’ve been put through a terrible series of events, a roller coaster of emotions from fear to freedom and they’ll hopefully remain in the United States, continue to study at our great education institutions like Temple, Drexel, Penn and all the great … schools in our area.”