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Under the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, any contact with law enforcement, no matter how small, can have big consequences for immigrants. That's especially true for international students who rely on their student visas to stay and study in the country. After weeks of confusion, the Trump administration recently confirmed in court that it targeted thousands of students, many of them over traffic violations and other minor charges. NPR's Joel Rose has the story.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: Thousands of international students were told they had lost permission to study and work in the U.S. and would likely have to leave, including this man, who recently got his master's degree at the University of South Florida.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1: This has affected my whole life.
ROSE: He asked NPR not to use his name because he's afraid of retaliation from immigration authorities. His troubles apparently started with a minor traffic violation last year when he was charged with failing to yield to a police officer. In court, the man explained he had been waiting for a safe place to pull off the highway.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1: And that was dismissed on the very first hearing of the court.
ROSE: But that single dismissed charge has now upended his life. His student visa registration allowed him to continue his training and work. That was abruptly terminated last month, forcing him to resign from his first job at the Florida Department of Revenue. He then joined a lawsuit against the Trump administration.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1: They have done irreparable damages already. Like, some people left the country. Some people left their studies. And in my case, I lost my job, and I have to get my job again.
ROSE: At least 60 of these lawsuits were filed across the country by international students, some just weeks from graduation, before the Trump administration reversed course temporarily. But by then, judges had already ruled against the administration in dozens of cases.
CHARLES KUCK: They got tired of losing.
ROSE: Immigration lawyer Charles Kuck says all of these cases hinge on a little-known government database that is crucial to the lives of international students. It's called the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS. Immigration authorities use it to track international students to make sure they're going to class and complying with other requirements. Kuck says ICE abruptly terminated these crucial records for thousands of students.
KUCK: It's quite clear that what ICE did here broke the law. They didn't follow the regulations they themselves have published and the policy they themselves have published.
ROSE: In a court hearing last week, the Trump administration finally confirmed what immigration lawyers had suspected. Starting in March, officials at ICE ran more than 1 million names of international students through a federal database that tracks encounters with law enforcement. They came up with 6,400 hits, an ICE official said during the hearing. Then ICE used that data to terminate thousands of SEVIS records. The problem, immigration lawyers say, is that many of those hits were for minor interactions with police, like traffic offenses or cases where charges were later dropped or dismissed.
BRAD BANIAS: So for getting a speeding ticket, they all of a sudden lost their visa status, were told they couldn't go to class and that they had to leave the country immediately.
ROSE: Brad Banias is an immigration lawyer who's representing over a hundred students, including one case in Washington, D.C., where a judge forced an ICE official to explain what happened. Banias was in court on Tuesday when ICE described how this effort, known as the Student Criminal Alien Initiative, worked.
BANIAS: ICE is completely comfortable painting anyone who has any interaction with the police as someone with a criminal record. That's the terrifying part.
ROSE: Immigrant advocates worry the Trump administration will try more initiatives like this as it gathers more data about immigrants with and without legal status. ICE did not reply to NPR's request for comment. The State Department did not respond to questions about the terminations, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio has defended the administration's aggressive push to revoke student visas and green cards from campus protesters and other international students.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "TRIGGERED")
MARCO RUBIO: If you have a DUI - if you're here on a student visa and you have a DUI or you have some other crime, that's an automatic suspension.
ROSE: That's Rubio speaking last month with Donald Trump Jr. on his podcast, "Triggered."
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "TRIGGERED")
RUBIO: That should be automatic. You commit a crime while you're in this country, your visa's gone. You didn't tell us you were coming here to break the law. You told us you were coming here to study.
ROSE: A conviction for driving under the influence can be grounds to revoke a student visa. But many of the law enforcement encounters that ICE used to justify these terminations were far less serious. And some students are still wondering why they were flagged at all, like this postdoc student at Purdue University in Indiana, who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity because he is also worried about retaliation.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #2: I have not had any criminal record. So basically, it's not obvious to me what - for what reason I could have been targeted. And that's sort of the scariest part because, like, you don't know what you did.
ROSE: The student had been applying for faculty positions in this country, but now he is trying to line up a job in Europe, and he says he knows many other international students who are also looking to leave the U.S. Joel Rose, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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