A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on Thursday, stopping the potential deportation of four University of Iowa international students. DHS had canceled their visas without informing either the students or the university in advance, as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping and seemingly arbitrary cancellation of the visas of more than 1,800 students at over 280 colleges and universities in recent weeks.
On Monday, the four UI students, one of whom is a graduate who works for the state as an epidemiologist, sued DHS in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa. The lawsuit names DHS Sec. Kristi Noem and the acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, as defendants. ICE is a division of DHS.
Because of the sensitive position the students are in, the current filings in the lawsuit refer to them as John Does 1 through 4. In Monday’s filing, the students said they had committed no offenses that would lead to their visas’ status being canceled in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), and that DHS had violated their right to due process by revoking their visas without legal justification or explanation.
In her order on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger instructed DHS to restore the students’ legal statuses in SEVIS, and backdate that restoration to the date of cancellation, so there is no lapse in status.
“All four [students] face irreparable harm outweighing risk of injury to defendants,” Ebinger said in her ruling.
According to their filing, after their visas were canceled three of the students received identical messages from U.S. embassies stating that “remaining in the United States can result in fines, detention, and/or deportation,” and warning “deportation can take place at a time that does not allow the person being deported to secure possessions or conclude affairs in the United States. Persons being deported may be sent to countries other than their countries of origin.”
The students allege those emails are part of a DHS policy created by the Trump administration “coercing international students into self-deportation by leveraging ambiguous student-status revocations, coupled with visa revocation notices and threatening language.”
The temporary restraining order issued by Ebinger prohibits DHS from initiating removal processes against the students while the temporary restraining order is in effect. It also prohibits DHS from changing the status of the students in SEVIS again “absent a valid ground,” and even then DHS must provide evidence for its action to the students and allow them to challenge it.
A hearing on whether a preliminary injunction against DHS will replace the restraining order will be scheduled as the next step in the case.
