The Trump administration on Friday reversed course on the revocation of visas for international students, making an abrupt — if temporary — 180 on a policy that left more than a thousand foreign students scrambling and civil rights experts sounding the alarm about free speech.
At a hearing in the Northern District of California in Oakland, the Justice Department said visas for international students have been restored while it works up a new framework to review and cancel student visas, NBC News reported.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is developing the new policy for status record termination, said U.S. attorney Elizabeth D. Kurlan during the hearing. Until that framework is in place, foreign students’ visas will not be terminated based solely on the government’s criminal records database, as was previously the case.
ICE, however, still has the authority to terminate international students’ records for other reasons, “including if a student fails to maintain their nonimmigrant status after it is reactivated, or engages in unlawful activity that would render them removable from the U.S. under the Immigration and Nationality Act,” Kurlan said.








