International students in WV cleared to return to class after Trump admin reverses course on visas

Two international students attending West Virginia colleges have been cleared to return to class after President Donald Trump’s administration abruptly reversed course on its plan to revoke their visas, the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia said Friday.

ACLU-WV sued the Trump administration on behalf of Sajawal Ali Sohail, a 25-year-old WVU computer science student from Pakistan and S.V., a 28-year-old Marshall graduate student from India. S.V. and Sohail were two of more than 1,000 international students around the country who were previously notified that their student visas were being revoked, putting them at risk for being deported.

“This is positive news not just for our two clients in West Virginia, but for international students across the country,” the ACLU-WV said in a statement Friday. “We are continuing to monitor the situation closely, particularly the announcement that ICE will be developing new policies for revoking legal statuses.

“We want to be clear that the administration is backing down not because it’s the right thing to do, but because they have been dragged to court repeatedly and lost again and again,” the organization said.