The U.S. government has formally issued a detailed framework outlining when and how international students’ legal statuses can be terminated, including for visa revocation that occur after entry into the country.
This policy document, filed in federal court on April 28, comes in response to several lawsuits filed by students whose records were abruptly removed from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) with little or no explanation.
Under the new guidance, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may cancel a student’s SEVIS record not only for failure to maintain full-time enrollment or report address changes, but also if their visa is revoked by the State Department.
Previously, visa revocation would not automatically strip a student of their legal status; this represents a significant expansion of ICE’s authority to initiate deportation proceedings.
According to a report by AP news, Immigration attorney Brad Banias, who represents several affected students, warned that the updated policy “gives ICE carte blanche to have the State Department revoke a visa and then deport those students even if they’ve done nothing wrong.”
He pointed out that minor infractions—such as dismissed traffic violations—now risk triggering a full termination of lawful presence in the U.S.
Since late March, approximately 6,400 international students had been flagged, according to U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes during a hearing on Tuesday. The students were flagged through Trump administration policy that matched SEVIS data against the National Crime Information Center database, said to be often based on minor or unprosecuted charges. Anyone implicated this way had their records terminated within 24 hours. The sudden removals provoked panic across campuses in the US.
In the wake of mounting legal challenges, federal officials also disclosed that they are temporarily reinstating the legal statuses of those whose records were recently canceled while finalizing clearer termination standards.
The government has committed to issuing supplementary guidelines to ensure due process and transparency before any future SEVIS terminations go into effect.
