TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — The Trump Administration is reinstating foreign student visas it terminated as it worked to deport roughly fifteen hundred international students across the country, including in Arizona.
Students have been winning temporary orders to prevent their deportations.
The Federal Government is effectively reinstating visas it pulled from international students by putting the names of foreign students back in the database used to track visas. Government lawyers had contended just removing the names from the database effectively revoked the students visas and required them to leave the U.S.
Now those names are restored. But halting student deporations may be temporary. Federal attorneys in cases in Washington, DC and in California say the government is revising how it handles the student visa database.
Defense attorneys have convinced judges in several states including Arizona, that simply pulling names from a database did not give students a proper chance to have lawyers argue their cases in court. Lawyers often call that idea “due process”. It’s described in the 5th Amendment of the Constitution which says in part, no one shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
The 5th Amendment says nothing about excluding non-citizens from due process protections.
A Federal Judge in Tucson just issued a temporary restraining order that puts a University of Arizona’s student’s deportation on hold. The student is a woman from India. Her court filings say she has married a man who is a U.S. Citizen and she has a child who is a U.S. citizen.
The judge agreed to keep the student’s name anonymous because the student fears retribution.
In many deportation efforts, the government argued if an international student committed any crime, that crime justified deportation. The students lawyers said she had a domestic violence charge that was dropped a few weeks after it was filed. Part of their argument said deleting her name from a database gave no chance for due process that included fair representation in court.
Overall, Federal Court documents say at least thirteen international students from Pima and Maricopa Counties are fighting deportation.