A federal judge in California has blocked the Trump administration from terminating the legal statuses of international students at universities across the U.S.
In the injunction, District Judge Jeffrey S. White in Oakland also prohibited the administration from arresting or detaining any foreign-born students on the basis of their immigration status while a case challenging previous terminations moves through the courts.
In his decision, White said that the Trump administration has “wreaked havoc” on the lives of the plaintiffs as well as other international students.
"Today’s ruling delays justice and seeks to kneecap the President’s constitutionally vested powers under Article II," Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
"The Trump administration is committed to restoring common sense to our student visa system, and we expect a higher court to vindicate us in this." We have the law, the facts, and common sense on our side.”
The Department of Justice declined to comment.
Though many international students have been successful in individually challenging the Trump administration, guaranteeing their own right to stay in the U.S., the injunction is the first to provide relief to students nationwide.
In the order, White wrote that the administration is barred from transferring any of the plaintiffs in ongoing cases to jurisdictions outside their residences, or from reversing any reinstatement of their records.
While the Trump administration had said in court documents this month that an injunction wasn't necessary because it had begun to restore statuses while Immigration and Customs Enforcement develops a new framework for terminations, the judge disagreed.
“At each turn in this and similar litigation across the nation, Defendants have abruptly changed course to satisfy courts’ expressed concerns,” the judge said. “It is unclear how this game of whack-a-mole will end unless Defendants are enjoined from skirting their own mandatory regulations.”
The Trump administration began revoking the visas of thousands of international students in addition to their records and legal statuses in March. The terminations appeared to take aim at those who had participated in political activism or had criminal charges against them, like DUIs.
And in late April, DHS revealed at a court hearing that the department used 10 to 20 employees to run the names of 1.3 million foreign-born students through the National Crime Information Center, an FBI-run computerized index that includes criminal history information.
Experts have criticized the process, pointing out that the index relies on cities, counties, states and other sources to voluntarily report their data. And sometimes the database doesn’t have the final dispositions of cases. It’s why, immigration attorneys and policy experts say, some students who’ve had cases dismissed, or were not convicted, likely still had their statuses revoked.
