USC student sues over terminated student visa status

COLUMBIA — A University of South Carolina international student from Nigeria filed suit Friday against the federal government, arguing he was denied due process after his student visa status was revoked last week without explanation.

Matthew Ariwoola, 32, was a fourth-year doctoral chemistry student at USC, scheduled to graduate in December. But on April 8, USC staff informed Ariwoola he could not continue studying and teaching as questions swirl around the change in his immigration status.

U.S. District Judge Jacquelyn Austin granted a temporary order late Friday to prevent Ariwoola’s detention or deportation while the case makes its way through the court system.

In the order, which applies for two weeks, the judge wrote the government should not stop Ariwoola from “continuing to pursue his academic and employment pursuits that he is authorized to pursue.”

Ariwoola is one in a wave of more than 1,000 international students at colleges nationwide suddenly facing the possibility of arrest and deportation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after the Trump administration terminated their student visas.

The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the SC Daily Gazette.

In South Carolina, at least a dozen USC students, a pair of Furman University students, and some students at Clemson University have had their student visas revoked or records terminated without warning, according to Allen Chaney, the legal director of the ACLU of South Carolina who is representing Ariwoola. (Chaney said those are the students his organization knows about; there could be more.)

“Matthew is yet another victim of the Trump administration’s haphazard and flagrantly unconstitutional dragnet of our international students,” Chaney said. “It’s hard to see how ejecting a hardworking and law-abiding doctoral student is anything but the product of an unmasked hatred of non-Americans. No one is better off if Matthew is deported, no one.”

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International students enter the United States most commonly through the F-1 student visa program. Records of their visa status are maintained through a federal Homeland Security database, known as the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS).

Questions remain on exactly what the record termination means for students’ legal status and what Homeland Security intended to happen as a result. The matter is now being battled out in the courts.

Once a student is granted a visa and residency status, they can typically stay in the U.S. even if that visa expires as long as they remain enrolled full time in school and aren’t convicted of a violent crime. There are also restrictions on off-campus jobs they’re authorized to take.

Ariwoola, whose visa expired in February, was researching ways to make medications more effective and teaching four chemistry courses at USC. He had been supporting his family through the stipend he receives from the university. Now he won’t be able to pay rent and could end up homeless, the ACLU of SC wrote.

Chaney said the federal immigration agency gave his client no warning that it intended to terminate his record.

The only reason listed in the federal database: “OTHER – Individual identified in criminal records check and/or has had their VISA revoked.”

“There’s no process, no notice, they’re just shipping them straight to termination,” Chaney told the SC Daily Gazette.

Ariwoola has never been convicted of a crime.

Police arrested him in 2023 on a warrant out of Georgia for alleged “theft by deception,” a crime which can involve the use of in-person or cyber scams to steal from a victim. But according to the ACLU, Ariwoola had never contacted the accuser and the prosecutor had dismissed all charges.

Historically, students whose visas were revoked or expired have not lost their legal residency status and could stay in the U.S. to finish school. It only prevented their leaving the U.S. and returning without reapplying.

In a similar case in Michigan involving four students from the University of Michigan and Wayne State University, lawyers from the government leaned into this, arguing in court documents filed this week that “terminating a record within SEVIS does not effectuate a visa revocation” because students can apply to have their status reinstated.

But immigration lawyers have questioned why Homeland Security terminated the records at all if it did not intend to revoke the students’ legal status.

And some students, including Ariwoola, have been told the opposite regarding their legal status.

“We recommend that you depart the United States as soon as possible because you no longer have legal status in the United States,” USC’s international student office wrote in an email to Ariwoola.

The email, attached to court filings, went on to say Ariwoola must resign from his internship and recommended he speak with an immigration attorney.

“Please know that we are here to help you as much as we can in these difficult times,” the email said.

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Chaney also said applying for reinstatement involves a new set of arguments and assumes the student’s records were rightfully terminated in the first place.

“If ICE believes a student is deportable, it has the authority to initiate removal proceedings and make its case,” the ACLU of South Carolina wrote in court documents. “It cannot, however, misuse SEVIS to circumvent the law, strip students of status, and bully them into self-deporting without any process of law.”

The ACLU also argued in court documents that universities themselves could lose the ability to host any current or future international students if they fail to comply with federal regulations by allowing a student with a revoked status continue to attend.

This creates a self fulfilling prophesy, leading to visa revocation if a student can’t remain enrolled.