A group of ACLU-affiliated organizations filed a class-action lawsuit Friday in federal court in New Hampshire, seeking to reinstate the legal status of over 100 international students whose visas were abruptly revoked this year.
The suit aims to protect students in New England and Puerto Rico who advocates say were stripped of their legal standing by the Trump administration without due process.
Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, called the move an unlawful overreach. “No administration should be allowed to unilaterally strip students of status, disrupt their studies, and put them at risk of deportation,” he said.
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Since late March, roughly 1,100 students across more than 170 US universities have had their student visas revoked, often with little or no warning, according to an Associated Press review. Several students have already secured temporary court orders halting deportation efforts.
Earlier this month, a student at the Rhode Island School of Design had their visa revoked without explanation, according to an April 7 letter from Crystal Williams, the school’s president.
She noted that RISD’s Office of International Students regularly monitors immigration records, but was not informed of the reasoning behind the government’s decision. The student’s status was formally marked “terminated,” reflecting a loss of legal standing in the US.
Steven Brown, executive director of the ACLU’s Rhode Island division, called the unexplained revocation of visas for several international students at Brown University and RISD “disturbing.”
The new suit claims plaintiffs learned their F-1 status had been revoked without the required notice. Among those noted in the lawsuit was an Indian student nearing completion of a master’s in computer science at Rivier University. Another was Hangrui Zhang from China, who lost his PhD research position at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
The Department of Homeland Security has not commented on the lawsuit.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously said the students’ visas were revoked because of national security concerns. He cited the students’ ties to protests over Israel’s war in Gaza. Some universities have said that many affected students had no such involvement in these actions. Instead, the schools said, the students were targeted over minor, unrelated issues.