Politico: “Feds reveal how immigration squad targeted thousands of foreign students”

The Trump administration has conducted war on international students with visa revocations, which have had impacts on all international students and will likely result in fewer international students coming to the United States in the future.

Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein for Politico summarizes the Trump administration’s “rushed project” known as the  “Student Criminal Alien Initiative” to target international students.

“Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, aided by contractors, ran 1.3 million names of foreign students through a federal database that tracks criminal histories, missing persons and other brushes with the law. The search found about 6,400 `hits’ that officials concluded were solid matches for names and other biographical details in the students’ records . . . .

But many of those hits flagged students who had minor interactions with police — arrests for reckless driving, DUIs and misdemeanors, with charges often dropped or never brought at all — far short of the legal standard required to revoke a student’s legal ability to study in the U.S. Nevertheless, ICE officials used that data to `terminate’ the students’ records in an online database schools and ICE use to track student visa holders in the U.S. Those terminations led schools to bar students from attending classes — some just weeks from graduation — and warn that they could be at risk of immediate deportation.”

The end result was more than 100 lawsuits, resulting in dozens of restraining orders. The Trump administration reversed the terminations and said it was drafting a new policy for vetting foreign students in the United States.

KJ