The Trump administration is reversing its revocation of student visas for international students who have expressed anti-Israel views or committed certain infractions.
Over recent months, the State Department has rescinded visas belonging to students who participated in anti-Israel protests or expressed criticism of the Israeli government’s offensive against the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
The reversal comes after multiple lawsuits against the administration challenging the policy, The New York Times reported.
Joseph F. Carilli, a Justice Department lawyer, said that immigration officials had begun work on a new system for reviewing and terminating visas for international students and that, until the process was complete, agencies would not make additional changes or further revocations.
The announcement followed a wave of individual lawsuits filed by students who have said they were notified that their legal right to study in the United States was rescinded, often with minimal explanation. In some cases, students had minor documented traffic violations or other infractions. But in other cases, there appeared to be no obvious cause for the revocations.
It was not clear how many student visa holders had left the country; students usually have at least a few weeks before they have to leave. But the Trump administration had stoked panic among students who found themselves under threat of detention and deportation with minimal explanation. A handful of students, including a graduate student at Cornell, have voluntarily left the country after abandoning their legal fight.
In March, the Trump administration moved to cancel visas and begin deportation proceedings against a number of students who had participated in demonstrations against Israel during the wave of campus protests last year over the war in Gaza. Federal judges had halted some of those revocations and slammed the brakes on efforts to remove those students from the country.
Excellent news! The Trump administration has backed down on the cancellation of visas for thousands of foreign students who had minor run-ins with the law. This came after over 100 lawsuits and 50 cases of judicial orders to temporarily undo their actions.
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) April 25, 2025
Big win for American… pic.twitter.com/KHq2IlkEVY
The policy affected about 1,200 foreign students who lost their legal status, leaving them open for deportation. The Associated Press reported that this prompted some to either go into hiding, leave the country, or stop attending classes.
In one of the lawsuits, a lawyer for the government read a statement in federal court in Oakland, California, that said ICE was restoring the student status for people whose records were terminated in recent weeks. Also Friday, the statement was read by a government attorney in a separate case in Washington, said lawyer Brian Green, who represents the plaintiff in that case. Green provided The Associated Press with a copy of the statement that the government lawyer emailed to him.
It says: “ICE is developing a policy that will provide a framework for SEVIS record terminations. Until such a policy is issued, the SEVIS records for plaintiff(s) in this case (and other similarly situated plaintiffs) will remain Active or shall be re-activated if not currently active and ICE will not modify the record solely based on the NCIC finding that resulted in the recent SEVIS record termination.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio last month affirmed that his agency is revoking the visas of students who participate in anti-Israel demonstrations. However, critics argue that the policy violates the right to free speech while targeting people who are not affiliated with Hamas.
There have been several high-profile reports of students being arrested and detained by federal law enforcement. Mahmoud Khalil, a student at Columbia University, has been incarcerated in a detention center in Louisiana for about a month. He was part of the anti-Israel protests that occurred on campus. But the government has not yet provided evidence that he was assisting Hamas.
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student, was also arrested late last month after multiple agents approached her on the street and took her into custody. The authorities claimed she was engaging in activities in support of Hamas. But the only evidence is an op-ed she co-wrote criticizing the school for not divesting from Israel over its supposed "genocide" in Gaza.
It’s not yet clear how the Trump administration might revamp – or possibly scrap – the policy.