WASHINGTON — The Trump administration revealed Friday it would stop terminating visas for hundreds of foreign students with even minor criminal backgrounds — at least for now.
In a federal court hearing in Washington, DC, a Justice Department attorney announced the shift would be temporary as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) develops a new policy to flag foreigners subject to deportation who are also studying under the F-1 visa regime, The New York Times reported.
Until then, no overseas scholar will have their visa rescinded “solely based” on information in the National Crime Information Center, DC assistant US attorney Joseph Carilli said in a written statement read out in court.
Hundreds of others who already had their visas canceled — whether their offenses were minor infractions like traffic violations or had been dismissed — will have them reactivated, Carilli also said.
ICE will still seek to deport other foreign students who engage in unlawful activity — including anti-Israel demonstrators on campus who have advocated for US-designated terror groups or who otherwise pose a threat to national security.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has declared there will be “zero tolerance” for such foreign visitors, students or otherwise, including Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil who led protests that harassed and intimidated Jewish students — and were endorsed by Hamas.
More than 1,500 foreign students were subject to visa revocations — but many sued alleging that they had not been convicted of violent crimes and thus had not violated the terms of their visas, according to a New York Times analysis.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association, however, said that since President Trump took office Jan. 20, the total number of records removed from ICE’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) had topped 4,700.
“ICE maintains the authority to terminate a SEVIS record for other reasons, such as if the plaintiff fails to maintain his or her nonimmigrant status after the record is reactivated or engages in other unlawful activity that would render him or her removable from the United States under the Immigration and Nationality Act,” Carilli added in his statement, per Politico.
There are roughly 1.1 million F-1 visa holders currently in the US, per Reuters, which noted that federal prosecutors also announced the policy reversal during a separate hearing in Boston federal court.
The Justice Department made the about-face after being hit with dozens of lawsuits and eventually restraining orders by federal judges who ruled against the pilot program.
Reps for ICE, the State Department and DOJ did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
