UI plaintiffs fear ICE may be creating new, unlawful policies to facilitate deportation

Lawyers for four University of Iowa international students fighting their potential deportation are now telling a federal judge they fear federal officials may have crafted a new, unlawful policy to revoke their status as students.

Last month, the four students sued Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director of ICE Todd Lyons in federal court.

According to their lawsuit, each of the plaintiffs was admitted to the United States on an F-1 student visa. The lawsuit alleges that on April 10, 2025, ICE abruptly canceled, without explanation, the plaintiffs’ status as students within DHS’ Student and Exchange Visitor Information Systems, or SEVIS, database.

A few days later, the lawsuit claims, three of the plaintiffs’ visas were revoked without explanation. The three each received identical messages from U.S. embassies, warning them that “remaining in the United States can result in fines, detention, and/or deportation.”

The lawsuit alleges that Homeland Security has initiated a national policy of “coercing international students into self-deportation by leveraging ambiguous student-status revocations, coupled with visa revocation notices and threatening language.”

On April 24, the judge in the case entered a temporary restraining order blocking Homeland Security from detaining or deporting the plaintiffs. The judge is still considering a motion to convert that order to a longer-lasting preliminary injunction.

Late last week, lawyers for Homeland Security submitted to the court a sworn statement from James Hicks, a division chief for the Student and Exchange Visitor Program within ICE.

In his statement, Hicks said the SEVIS database has restored the plaintiffs’ status as students to “active” in keeping with the court’s temporary restraining order. Hicks said that while outsiders can’t see it, there is a new notation added in each student’s electronic record indicating their active status was restored retroactively to the original date of termination.

Lawyers for the students, however, appear to be less than satisfied by Hicks’ assurances.

“Defendants have not backdated the restoration of plaintiffs’ SEVIS status in a manner visible to designated school officers and other immigration agencies,” they responded in a court filing. They noted that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — which is a different entity from the similarly named Immigration and Customs Enforcement — “may deny a benefit based on a student’s failure to maintain status, and the Department of State, which could deny or revoke a visa at any time, including for failure to maintain status.”

Unless the students’ SEVIS record is modified in a way that is visible to all end-users of the system, Homeland Security and ICE are out of compliance with the court’s temporary restraining order, attorneys for the students argue.

Homeland Security’s promise that it will not attempt again to terminate the four individuals’ status as students provides little protection, they add, pointing to a new policy at ICE and the agency’s limited promise that it won’t try again to terminate the UI students’ status in a manner that’s “based solely” on the criminal record check that triggered the initial attempt.

On April 26, 2025, they point out, ICE implemented a new policy introducing two new grounds for student termination — visa revocation and failure to maintain status – that could now be applied to the four UI students.

ICE and Homeland Security, the students’ lawyers have told the court, “have given no assurance that they will not terminate on these grounds.” The two federal agencies, they add, are “staying notably silent on their new, unlawful grounds for termination.”

The students’ lawyers cite ICE’s shifting policies as further evidence of the need for a preliminary injunction in the case.

The four plaintiffs in the case are Sri Chaitanya Krishna Akondy, an Indian national now working for the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services; Prasoon Kumar, an Indian national and chemical engineering student; Songli Cai, a Chinese national and third-year undergraduate student; and Haoran Yang, a Chinese national and third-year undergraduate and pre-doctorate student.