International Students Sue Trump Administration Over Visa Revocations
Several international students have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration, alleging that their visas were unjustly revoked and their due process rights were violated. These legal challenges come amidst a broader context of increased scrutiny of immigrants and a series of policy changes affecting international students in the United States. The actions by the federal government to terminate students’ legal status have left hundreds of scholars at risk of detention and deportation.
Background: Student Visas and Legal Status
Students from other countries must meet a series of requirements to obtain a student visa, usually an F-1. After gaining admission to a school in the US, students go through an application and interview process at a US embassy or consulate abroad. Students on an F-1 visa must show they have enough financial support for their course of study in the US. They have to remain in good standing with their academic program and are generally limited in their ability to work off-campus during their academic program.
Entry visas are managed by the state department. Once they are in the US, international students’ legal status is overseen by the student and exchange visitor program under the Department of Homeland Security.
To remain in legal status, international students must adhere to specific regulations, including maintaining good academic standing and refraining from unauthorized employment.
Mass Termination of Student Visas
Since mid-March, at least 901 students at 128 colleges and universities have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated, according to an Associated Press review of university statements and correspondence with school officials. The specialist publication Inside Higher Education has been running a tracker on revocations and as of 16 April had identified at least 1,300 overseas students and recent graduates at more than 200 US institutions who had their “legal status changed” by the US state department in recent weeks.
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Colleges learned the legal residency status of some of their international students had been terminated when college staff checked a database managed by homeland security. In the past, college officials say, legal statuses typically were updated after colleges told the government the students were no longer studying at the school. Historically, students who had their visas revoked were allowed to keep their legal residency status and complete their studies. The lack of a valid entry visa only limited their ability to leave the US and return, something they could reapply for with the state department. But if a student has lost legal residency status, they risk detention by immigration authorities. Some students already have left the country, abandoning their studies to avoid being arrested.
Lawsuits Allege Due Process Violations
In lawsuits against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), students have argued the government lacked justification to cancel their visa or terminate their legal status. The lawsuits argue that the government denied them due process when it suddenly took away their permission to be in the US.
The ACLU of Michigan attorneys wrote in a lawsuit on behalf of students at Wayne State University and the University of Michigan: “The timing and uniformity of these terminations leave little question that DHS has adopted a nationwide policy, whether written or not, of mass termination of student [legal] status.”
In New Hampshire, a federal judge last week issued a restraining order in the case of a Dartmouth College computer science student from China, Xiaotian Liu, who had his status terminated by the government. Attorneys have filed similar challenges in federal court in Georgia and California.
The lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by The State News, comes amid the Department of Homeland Security's recent ramping up in the termination of students’ records in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS). MSU said Friday that it is aware of 12 international students whose SEVIS records were terminated, although there may be more.
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Reasons for Visa Revocations
Visas can be canceled for a number of reasons, but colleges say some students are being singled out over infractions as minor as traffic violations, including some long in the past. In some cases, students say it is unclear why they were targeted.
One of the students was arrested and charged with domestic violence in November, but the case was dismissed for lack of evidence in February, according to the lawsuit. Other cases involved expired license plates or tags or speeding. Another involved a DUI charge that was reduced to reckless driving.
Specific Cases
Aaron Ortega Gonzalez: An international student at Oregon State University has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration after it revoked his legal status earlier this month. Aaron Ortega Gonzalez is a Mexican citizen and a PhD student at Oregon State, where he’s been researching the impact of wildfires on ranchlands. Attorneys for Ortega Gonzalez say he has never committed a crime or a traffic violation. He’s never withdrawn from his studies - which can result in visa termination - nor has he “engaged in unauthorized employment.”
MSU Student: The MSU student, a 27-year-old doctoral student in engineering from China, learned in early April that his SEVIS record had been terminated. in 2023 with plans to graduate in 2030, faced assault and battery charges after a physical altercation with another person in a campus laboratory. After being temporarily suspended from MSU during an investigation into the incident, the university cleared him of any wrongdoing and the criminal charges were dismissed Monday.
Student Does: on student visas for more than five years, according to court filings. One is a student at an Orange County college, the other at a college in the inland empire. In the lawsuits, both were listed as “Student Doe” to protect their identities.
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Concerns and Reactions
Higher education leaders worry the arrests and visa revocations could discourage students overseas from pursuing higher education in the United States. The lack of clarity of what is leading to revocations can create a sense of fear among students, said Sarah Spreitzer, vice-president of government relations at the American Council on Education.
“The very public actions that are being taken by Ice [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and the Department of Homeland Security around some of these students, where they are removing these students from their homes or from their streets, that’s not usually done unless there is a security issue when a student visa is revoked,” she said. “The threat of this very quick removal is something that’s new.”
“These actions create an uncertain and challenging environment for our campus community,” UC Berkeley Chancellor Richard Lyons said in a statement Monday, KQED reported.
In messages to their campuses, colleges have said they are asking the federal government for answers on what led to the terminations.
Broader Immigration Policies and the H-1B Visa Fee
“What you’re seeing happening with international students is really a piece of the much greater scrutiny that the Trump administration is bringing to bear on immigrants of all different categories,” said Michelle Mittelstadt, director of public affairs at the Migration Policy Institute.
America’s largest business organization filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s proclamation imposing a $100,000 fee on H-1B visa holders. The immigration fee was contained in a September 19, 2025, presidential proclamation. The legal action follows an earlier lawsuit against the $100,000 fee filed on October 3, 2025. The fee has distressed many employers that seek to hire high-skilled talent, viewing the additional cost as prohibitive. The new lawsuit’s legal arguments could block the $100,000 fee.
The Chamber of Commerce complaint argues that Congress, not the president, has the authority over the design of the H-1B visa category and the fees that govern it. “To that end, it has struck an intricate, thoughtful balance by specifying how fees for the program should be calculated, how many visas may be issued annually, and what requirements the executive branch should enforce to ensure that H-1B workers do not displace American workers or undercut wages,” according to the complaint.
According to the complaint, “The presidential proclamation at issue in this action . . . upends that carefully crafted congressional balance. The centerpiece of the Proclamation is the imposition of a $100,000 fee on all new petitions filed by United States employers intending to hire foreign workers through the H-1B program.”
The complaint states that the fee would inflict significant harm, forcing businesses to “either dramatically increase their labor costs or hire fewer highly skilled employees for whom domestic replacements are not readily available.” The new fee would make it no longer economically viable for many employers, notably smaller businesses, according to the plaintiff. “These harms to American businesses will also be a boon to America’s economic rivals, who will surely welcome the talent no longer able to accept work in the United States. That is a competitive edge that foreign employers might never cede back.”
Legal Arguments Against the H-1B Fee
The complaint argues the proclamation is misguided and unlawful. “The President has significant authority over the entry of noncitizens into the United States, but that authority is bounded by statute and cannot directly contradict laws passed by Congress. The Proclamation does precisely that: It blatantly contravenes the fees Congress has set for the H-1B program and countermands Congress’s judgment that the program should provide a pathway for up to 85,000 people annually to contribute their talents to the United States for the betterment of American society.”
The complaint lists reasons why the court should rule that the proclamation exceeds the president’s authority. First, the proclamation “expressly overrides provisions” of immigration law that govern the H-1B visa category. The plaintiff notes Congress established specific fees for H-1B visas, such as a fee that funds training and scholarships, and also allows the executive to charge fees for visas and services “sufficient to fund its activities related to those services,” but not more. “The $100,000 fee, imposed with no procedure whatsoever, dramatically upends Congress’s deliberate decisions about how much a visa (and in particular, an H-1B visa) should cost and flouts the cost-recovery principle.”
In a crucial passage, the complaint lays out potentially the Chamber’s strongest argument: “The INA [Immigration and Nationality Act] permits the executive branch to charge immigration fees in two circumstances: (a) where the fee is adopted via notice and comment rulemaking and set at a level necessary to recoup USCIS’s costs . . . or (b) where Congress itself has expressly authorized the fee through statute. The Proclamation’s exorbitant $100,000 application fee falls into neither category.
The plaintiff makes a second argument: “The Proclamation exceeds the president’s authority by misapplying or failing to fulfill statutory requirements.” The complaint notes that although the proclamation relies on Section 212(f), which permits the president to “suspend” or “restrict” a person’s “entry,” the proclamation does not bar all nationals of specific countries or certain statuses, as in the Hawaii case (also known by some as the “Muslim ban” case). “Here, by contrast, the Proclamation seeks to change the terms of an existing visa program under the INA while continuing to admit the very same noncitizens, so long as they comply with the new terms.”
The plaintiff argues that Section 212(f) “does not authorize the president to institute new payments as conditions of entry.” (Emphasis in original.) The complaint notes that under prior court rulings, “The president has no power to raise revenues. That power is in the Congress by Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.”
“In all, the Proclamation exceeds the president’s statutory authority,” according to the complaint. “It directly conflicts with the INA multiple times over, it extends to areas beyond the scope of the president’s authority to restrict entry, and it fails to make the threshold findings required by law.”
The plaintiff also argues that any agency action implementing the proclamation would be unlawful and violate the Administrative Procedure Act. The $100,000 payment was not set by notice-and-comment rulemaking but by “presidential fiat.” According to the complaint, DHS and State cannot implement a fee that is not a valid exercise of the president’s authority, conflicts with other elements of immigration law and is “arbitrary and capricious.”
The complaint requests that the court enjoin and set aside the proclamation, and hold any implementing agency action as unlawful.
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