Tucson students sue Trump administration over legal-status terminations

A Tucson law firm is suing Trump administration officials on behalf of two international students living in Pima County whose legal statuses were terminated without legitimate cause and in violation of due process, their attorney says.

The complaints, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Arizona, include a motion for a temporary restraining order to protect the students from “unlawful” arrest by immigration authorities and to allow them to continue working on campus and finish their studies.

The Pima County-based students — one pursuing a master’s and the other a doctoral degree — were both set to graduate this year, and have been taking classes remotely from home, due to their fear of being detained, said Tucson immigration attorney Matt Green, managing partner at Green Evans-Schroeder.

The lawsuits don’t list the plaintiffs by name, due to their fear of retaliation by the Trump administration, Green said.

“I can tell you that both of my clients are terrified that they may be detained and taken away from their spouses and their young U.S. citizen children,” Green told the Arizona Daily Star on Tuesday. “They definitely want to maintain as much privacy as possible.”

Green would not specify which schools the two Pima County students attend, to protect their privacy. Both had prior contact with law enforcement for minor offenses that “in each case did not result in a criminal conviction,” he said.

The lawsuits are among about a dozen cases filed in federal courts nationwide — including New York, Georgia, California and Washington state — since last month, when the U.S. State Department started revoking students’ visas, and as the Department of Homeland Security terminated the students’ legal status in its Student and Exchange Visitor Information Systems database, known as SEVIS.

Typically even if a student’s visa is revoked, they are still allowed to stay in the country to finish their studies as long as their status as foreign students in the SEVIS database remains active, Green said. A student visa only controls the student’s entry to the country, not his or her legal status as a foreign student once they are here.

The lawsuits focus on what Green calls unlawful SEVIS terminations, arguing DHS does not have the legal authority to unilaterally revoke SEVIS status without advance notice to the student, who by law should have a chance to respond.

Under federal regulations, a valid basis for terminating SEVIS records includes a student failing to maintain a full class load, working without authorization, or being convicted of a violent crime with a possible sentence of more than one year.

The complaints, which seek relief under the Administrative Procedures Act and the 5th Amendment’s due process clause, name President Donald Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Phoenix office director John Cantu, acting ICE director Todd Lyons and DHS secretary Kristi Noem.

In seeking protection from “unlawful arrest” for the client, one of Green’s complaints cites high-profile arrests of students in New York, Boston and D.C. who were transferred to immigration detention in states including Louisiana and Texas.

“If ICE believes a student is deportable for having a revoked visa or any other reason, it has the authority to initiate removal proceedings and make its case in court,” the complaint reads. “It cannot, however, misuse SEVIS ... to circumvent the law, strip students of status, and drive them out of the country without process. It similarly cannot engage in retaliatory arrests and transfers to further intimidate students into abandoning their studies and fleeing the country to avoid arrest.”

In addition to the two students he’s formally representing, Green said he’s consulting with multiple students from Arizona State University and “more than a few” from the University of Arizona about their student-visa revocations. So far, all are from the Middle East, Asia or southeast Asia, he said.

Visas revoked at UA, ASU, Pima

Across the country, at least hundreds — and likely thousands, lawyers say — of international students’ visas have been revoked and their SEVIS statuses terminated in violation of due process, attorneys say. The revocations affect international students with either no or minor criminal histories, such as simple traffic violations or other infractions that are not grounds for student-visa revocations, let alone deportations, their lawyers say.

ASU now has more than 100 international students who have had their student visas revoked by the new Trump administration, according to Michael Kintscher, president of the United Campus Workers Arizona, an organization which advocates for workers at ASU, UA and Northern Arizona University.

“We have now confirmed the number of students with visas revoked at ASU is over 100,” Kintscher told the Star Monday. Kintscher said he couldn’t reveal the source of the figure, due to retaliation concerns.

Pima Community College, which serves 212 international students, has recorded one international student’s SEVIS account being terminated by the Department of Homeland Security, said Phil Burdick, PCC’s vice chancellor for external relations.

Kintscher said the number of student visas revoked at the UA is “fewer than a dozen.” The UA administration has refused to confirm any student visa revocations.

In a Tuesday faculty-wide email, faculty leaders reported the UA had fewer than 10 visas revoked as of last week, but said the number was rising.

“For the cases we know about, the methodology apparently used is cross referencing student visa lists with local law enforcement records, including misdemeanors and traffic violations,” said the email from UA Secretary of the Faculty Katie Zeiders, Faculty Chair Leila Hudson and Faculty Vice Chair Mona Hymel.

“All the cases of visa revocations at UA are reportedly linked to non-political police encounters (e.g., traffic violations). We have not heard of any visa revocations here that are related to political activity on our campus,” they wrote. “Many of the students with visa revocations have already returned to their home countries (‘self-deported’).”

According to the faculty leaders’ email, while UA administrators might not be notified directly by the State Department, they can scan the SEVIS system to see which international students are affected daily. The email said affected students are being advised by attorneys to seek formal legal representation and consider “immediately filing an injunction in federal court” which could stall deportation.

UA spokesperson Mitch Zak said Tuesday, “The university continues to respect the privacy of our international students, faculty, and scholars, and emphasizes the importance of relying on verified information. We encourage international students and scholars to contact us with any questions, as university staff are available to support their success and compliance.”

Notifications sent to students informing them their visas were revoked encouraged students to leave the country, faculty leaders wrote in the email.

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“Enforcement action — which we have not yet seen at UA — can lead to detention in or out of state without due process,” Zeiders, Hudson and Hymel said in the email.

Faculty leaders also said the initial intake and subsequent legal costs are not being paid by the UA and that UA counsel cannot represent the students, but did not state the reason behind this. They also confirmed there had been no federal law enforcement or immigration enforcement presence on the UA campus so far.

Kintscher, who said ASU is offering free legal services to affected students, clarified that is a standard practice for ASU that students have already paid for through an additional “international student fee,” which also covers legal consultation.

National picture

Atlanta immigration attorney Charles Kuck said he filed a lawsuit on behalf of 18 international students on Friday, in the northern district of Georgia, and on Tuesday was adding to the case another 150 students who hailed from across the country, including Arizona. Kuck said he’ll ask the judge to consider the cases jointly because they all share the same set of facts and requests for relief.

Kuck estimates at least 5,000 students nationwide have had their student visas revoked since the end of March.

To carry out so many revocations so quickly, the Trump administration must be using an automated process, likely powered by artificial intelligence, which would also explain what Kuck called the nonsensical basis for the revocations, he said.

“The only way they could get this level and number of students is to use A.I.,” he said. Kuck said he suspects they cross-referenced the SEVIS database with federal and state databases related to criminal or civil violations, including traffic infractions.

“They got a list, and just revoked all of them,” he said. “I think they spent no time reviewing them individually, and they certainly didn’t follow the law on the revocations.”

One of the students he’s representing had a visa issue at an airport in 2014 and was sent back home, he said. The student cleared up the issue and returned to the U.S., and has traveled back and forth dozens of times since then, he said. Yet 11 years later, her visa was randomly revoked, he said.

What Kuck called the Trump administration’s lack of care in executing the visa revocations and SEVIS cancellations means the students fighting back have strong cases, he said.

“Because they’re using a wrecking ball, they’re giving the courts viable options to stop their efforts,” he said. “Their own actions are causing court actions to be successful.”

The government has not specified why the students are losing their status, and that is likely because a legitimate basis doesn’t exist; they’re hoping to scare students into self-deporting, even if they have a legal basis for staying, Kuck said.

“Of all the students that have contacted us — and we’re talking about hundreds — none have a deportable offense,” he said. “These kids are scared, and they (immigration authorities) want them to be scared. They want them to think they’re going to be picked up tomorrow, because then they’ll leave” voluntarily.

ASU less transparent now

The ASU administration had initially confirmed eight student visa revocations two weeks ago, but has reduced its transparency since the numbers started rising, Kintscher said.

“They’re not providing that level of detail anymore,” he said.

Asked to confirm reports that 100 student visas had been revoked, an ASU spokesperson said Tuesday, “With more than 17,000 international students, Arizona State University has one of the largest international student communities in the country. Federal authorities have revoked visas for some students. Due to the complexity of the visa process, including appeals and other procedures, exact numbers at any given moment are not available.”

The spokesperson said the revocations are “unrelated to campus protests; they stem from what appear to be, in most cases, various legal infractions.” The statement also clarified that “none of ASU’s more than 17,000 international students have been deported.”

Kintscher said the level of transparency coming from the universities is “inadequate.”

“They are actively doing harm to the communities they’re supposed to be serving,” he said. “Their desire to protect individuals is commendable, and I think no one is questioning that.”

But the lack of transparency makes it harder for students to know how to protect themselves, he said.

By “denying that information, the university is actually making their students less safe. I also think that they are intentionally, or not, furthering all the goals of the current administration, the current federal administration of sowing fear and confusion among the students.”

UA declined through Zak to comment on that claim by Kintscher.

Fall enrollment for international students at U.S. universities is already down by more than 130,000 students, Kuck said.

“Fall enrollment is going to be a disaster,” he said. “We’re about to lose this level of talent, the best and brightest, they’re going to to Europe. And Europe’s going to eat our lunch in five years.”