Trump Administration Reverses Course on Student Visa Cancellations

The Trump administration on Friday abruptly walked back its cancellation of more than 1,500 student visas held by international students, announcing a dramatic shift by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during a court hearing in Washington.

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lawsuits filed by students who have said they were notified that their legal right to study in the United States was rescinded, often with minimal explanation.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.

But in recent weeks, hundreds of students, including many from India and China, received word that their visas had been revoked. That caused a wave of panic across the country among students and academics whose prospects of finishing a degree or completing graduate research were upended without warning.

A spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

During the hearing on Friday, Mr. Carilli said the government was prepared to file the policy change across other lawsuits, potentially providing some reprieve for students who had sued to have their visas reinstated and remain in the country through graduation ceremonies in the spring.

Other lawsuits, including a potential class action in New England, have been filed seeking to stop the administration from more broadly from carrying out further cancellations.