In a controversial move, the Trump administration’s abrupt revocation of thousands of international student visas has raised significant legal and procedural concerns.
A recent court hearing revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used a flawed method to target 6,400 foreign students, potentially violating their due process rights and sparking a legal backlash. As the US government faces mounting lawsuits, questions remain about the fairness and transparency of this visa termination process.
A Washington court hearing on the matter was the forum for DHS to disclose that they used 10-20 employees to run the names of 1.3 million foreign-born students through an FBI-run index on criminal history information, the National Crime Information Center. US legal experts claim the database may not be the most up-to-date.
According to the report, approximately 6,400 hits were produced through this system, leading to the immediate termination of corresponding student visas. Records in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) were updated, though the system primarily maintains information on students who are not considered immigrants and who are in the US on exchange purposes.
The hearing revealed federal authorities' plans to screen foreign students in the Student Criminal Alien Initiative. This created a broad base for any possible infraction made by students who were not US citizens, for anything from dismissed charges to traffic violations.
The system used by the Trump administration was flawed and led to students being barred from classes and at risk of deportation; in turn, the Student Criminal Alien Initiative led to over 100 lawsuits challenging these actions. This legal backlash led federal judges to say the process was unlawful and lacking due process.
The administration responded by reversing these terminations, announcing plans to re-vamp plans to draft policies on vetting foreign students. In the past, if a student’s visa was revoked, they could generally remain in the country to finish school — they just would not be able to re-enter legally, according to the Associated Press.
The Trump administration has so far revoked over 1,000 student visas since March 2025. Many of these students have said that they’ve had little to no explanation for why this happened.
Legal advocates for these students have argued that students’ due process rights were violated in these visa revocations, further expanding the need for review and a close eye on these matters.
According to US media reports from student witnesses, these policies have caused students to go into hiding.
Questionable turnaround time
The rapid turnaround associated with the search of the database and subsequent visa revocations led to questions about whether or not individual records were reviewed. US District Judge Ana Reyes said in a hearing last week that one such revocation had no evidence of review. Referring to the case of Akshar Patel, minor infractions such as this had been grouped together without evidence of review.
Patel was an international student in Texas who was previously pulled over and charged with reckless driving in 2018, with the charges ultimately being dropped.
Patel had appeared in a spreadsheet with 734 students, which was then forwarded to a Homeland Security official, who, within 24 hours of receiving it, replied: “Please terminate all in SEVIS,” referring to a different database listing foreigners who have legal status as students in the US. “All of this could have been avoided if someone had taken a beat,” Reyes, who was appointed by former US president Joe Biden, said.
As an added bonus, as DHS was revoking legal status, the State Department was allegedly canceling other students’ visas, with which they entered the country.
The US government has tried using pro-Palestinian protesters as an example, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio claiming the cancellations were not directly related to the protests, but were “just having to do with potential criminal activity.”
“My standard: If we knew this information about them before we gave them a visa, would we have allowed them in?” Rubio told reporters in March. “If the answer is no, then we revoke the visa.”
Rubio also stated in March that students with revoked visas will need to depart. “Your visa is expired, your visa is revoked, you have to leave,” he said. “There is no right to a student visa.”