James Pittman: Welcome to Immigration Uncovered, the docketwice video podcast where we dive deep into the fascinating world of immigration law. I'm your host, James Pittman. And today, episode 52, we are gonna be talking about the entire controversy with student visas, SEVIS terminations, and the administration's actions against student visa holders. And I'm joined by attorney Amy Maldonado, founder of the law office of Amy Maldonado, located in East Lansing, Michigan. Amy, welcome.

Amy Maldonado: Thanks. Thanks for having me.

James Pittman: Sure. And Amy is an focuses on employment based immigration law, and we're gonna have a, in-depth discussion here. So, Amy, let's just get into talking about sort of the most recent thing. I know people that are listening have probably been following this entire controversy a bit. There was a whole bunch of student visa holders who had either had their status terminated or and and and got notice of it or even just had their SEVIS record terminated but weren't actually notified in writing that their status was terminated. And now the latest thing is, just the other day, maybe on Friday, the administration announced that it's gonna reverse those SEVIS terminations. So can you just bring us up to speed as to what the most recent, I mean, some details about the most recent actions?

Amy Maldonado: Sure. So last Friday, ICE issued an initial statement that said ICE is developing a policy that will provide a framework for SEVIS record terminations. Until such a policy is issued, the SEVIS records for plaintiffs and other similarly situated plaintiffs will remain active or shall be reactivated if not currently active. Now that's not all of it, but this key phrase has been deleted from last Friday to today, which is literally one business day. And ICE will not modify the records solely based on the NCIC finding that resulted in the recent SEVIS record termination. That's some critical language that they have deleted from the statement. The rest of the statement goes on to say ICE maintains the authority to terminate his SEVIS record for other reasons, such as if a student failed to maintain his or her non immigrant status after the record is reactivated or engages in other unlawful activity that would render him or her removable from The United States under the Immigration and Nationality Act. So we're kind of left today not quite knowing what to do because number one, they seem to be backtracking. Number two, this spawned at least 50 lawsuits. I know there are at least 50 TROs that were entered all over the country. You know, some of the big ones were Chuck Cook in Georgia. He filed for a 37 plaintiffs, I think. Ron Abramson, who is currently on vacation with his wife and texted me that he's going to focus on his vacation and his wife This morning, he had over a hundred plaintiffs that he was looking at adding to the Lou case, which was the first case with the CLU of New Hampshire that was filed up in New Hampshire. And we had 30 final plaintiffs. We had talked to about, oof, maybe 30 to 40 more potential plaintiffs, but then the SEVIS record started being reactivated, and so those plaintiffs all fell off. So we had actually just filed an amended complaint before this started happening, and our clients were doing a meeting today at 5PM to talk about what the next steps may be and what we're gonna do. The government opposing counsel, the assisting US attorney reached out to us, and are I'm sure they're gonna take the position that the litigation is moot. I'm not so sure, and we're also hearing rumors that Chinese students primarily have had their visas unrevoked, like their revocations were undone. And the reason that I find that really call me paranoid, but I think they really are all out to get us, is that Chinese students get three months single entry visas.

James Pittman: So

Amy Maldonado: why unrevoke them unless you're trying to, like, lure people into a false sense of security that they can travel and renew their visa. And I'm still advising all of our plaintiffs, do not travel. Like, you have a target on you. Do not travel. You are not getting back in. I doubt you're gonna get a new visa, and that's kinda where we are today. We're looking at there is plenty of case law about mootness when an issue is capable of repetition but evading review, and the statement, if you read it carefully by ICE, the statement really says to me, we're gonna we did this completely unlawfully, and because we're getting slammed in courts all over the country, we're gonna back down for now and we're gonna publish something in the Federal Register and try to have a go at it again, this time, you know, creating a lawful path for ourselves. I mean, the problem with that is, I think, the evidence animus that the unlawful SEVIS terminations have created. But I am I don't think this is over. I think we're just gonna have a round two.

James Pittman: Well, let's let's let's give a sense. Let's take a half step back and get a sense of of the scope of all this, and then I have a lot of questions about the the most recent actions. So approximately how many students, as far as you can tell, were affected by the initial terminations?

Amy Maldonado: I mean, at first, I read, I think, four or 500, and then I read up to 1,500. And I know NAFSA was tracking it. I read somewhere that it was over 4,000 students, but I don't know if that's actually true. I think the NAFSA survey, which was of DSOs, said more than 1,500 students had their records terminated in CBIS.

James Pittman: Okay. And now, the reinstatement, what's the scope of the reinstatement? Is it pretty much across the board? All of those 1,500 or so are gonna be reinstated for now?

Amy Maldonado: Yeah. So, basically, when they did this, they created and they did this midstream. So, at first, they started terminating records, and they used a category in SEVIS that was available prior. It it was like an other, you know, explanation. And they invented this new category that was just other that's not accessible to DSOs, that's only accessible to SEVP. And the students that they had terminated prior to about April 8 all got switched after they created this new category to the new category. What's interesting about that is when they started doing the reinstatements, they told all of us who were in court that it was going to take time because the reinstatements had to be done manually, which is really odd since it's clear that they used some kind of algorithm to terminate them up front. I mean, was all done over the course of a couple weeks. So I'm not sure why it's taking them so long to undo it, but it should be pretty clear in their system who got their record terminated for this reason based on this other category.

James Pittman: Now, are there any specific categories of students who remain excluded from the reinstatements, like any of the ones that they, you know, are going after for the alleged national security concerns? Was that mentioned at all, or that was left out of the No.

Amy Maldonado: I would expect those students to continue to have issues. We had the first student who came into our office was actually a Michigan State University student, and I felt so bad for him, and we were gonna sue for him anyway. And then we just got inundated with all these other requests because he came into our office. He had been in this nightmare. He's only been here for not quite, I wanna say a year and a half, two years. He came to a graduate program at Michigan State, and by the end of his first year, he reported somebody else in his graduate program for academic fraud to his adviser. The adviser did not report it up the food chain, but apparently told the other person in his program who was also from China, who then assaulted him. Then our client left, defended himself minimally, left the premises, and the attacker aggressor called the police and filed false charges against him, which caused him to be suspended from the university and charged criminally with felony assault. And then once that was the university conducted a full investigation, and at the end of it, they concluded that it was more likely than not that the other person had attacked my client, and all of the charges were dropped. So he gets to he was in a language program waiting on his time to transfer back into his his graduate program. He filed to transfer back to Michigan State, and his SEVIS record was terminated the next day, so he could no longer transfer. So we saw people with parking tickets, with a traffic violation. We had one person charged with jaywalking, you know, a terrible crime that makes us all feel unsafe in our homes. And most of these were resolved with a dismissal. I mean, we had some single misdemeanor retail theft issues come up, and usually, it was, like, somebody who went with their roommate to Walmart, and the roommate did price tag switching, and they both get arrested. So we really didn't deal with the political, you know, suppression of speech cases like Ramesia Ozturk, who's being reviewed by Masa Khanbavi, and the other cases like that. So I I honestly don't know because our clients were not in that pool of people.

James Pittman: Aside from putting language on its website announcing that they're backtracking, has has ICE like, did they provide any guidance to universities? You know? I know they didn't to students, but to the universities about, you know, their initial actions, and now about the reinstatement, are they communicating with the DSOs? Is it just like, see our website, and we're not gonna speak directly to you?

Amy Maldonado: They didn't communicate with the DSOs. They provided no guidance. And then what was really crazy about this is prior to this incident that started happening, the DSOs and the immigration bar and everybody else were basically of the position that if you are terminated in SEVIS, you know, you're admitted DS, what controls the duration of status? It's your SEVAS record. That's how we know you're in status or out of status. So they started getting sued, and all of a sudden ICE came up with this theory that, oh, well, a SEVAS record is separate from f status. And the DSOs were like, what are they talking about? Like, this has not been our understanding ever. And it seems to be a brand new thing that they came up with to defend their indefensible actions and litigation. So I don't even think the government believes that they were in f one status. I just think that was a convenient position to fall back on when judges started questioning them on what authority they were doing this. And the US attorney in our case, the assistant US attorney was like, the Homeland Security Act generally, like, they have no authority that they can cite to in the regulations and the statute to do this. None. So my guess is they're gonna be instituting some authority to do this.

James Pittman: So wait. Now my understanding, thinking back was that, you know, students first of all, for example, when you talk about having status terminated or and and starting to accrue unlawful presence, let's just take that for an example. My understanding was that the the SEVIS termination itself didn't was not supposed to trigger that. Like, they have to actually be found Yeah. Out of status by USCIS.

Amy Maldonado: That's unlawful presence. That's a different issue. So you can be out of status and not unlawfully present with no problem. But if you're not maintaining status, you're subject to a lot of various, you know, harms, like being put in removal proceedings.

James Pittman: Sure.

Amy Maldonado: And then the judge makes the determination of whether or not you're out of status. So, yeah. No. And that that was an issue that came up frequently was people were talking about the unlawful presence issue, and I'm like, unlawful presence is a separate question. It's when are you gonna be penalized for overstaying? Right. It's not are you maintaining valid status today? And for the people on OPT and STEM OPT and CPT and on campus employment, that was all terminated immediately, effective, like, the moment that they the SEVP terminated their SEVIS record. And our DSO we had a DSO provide a declaration for us that was amazing. And he said that when they did that, the end date of the OPT automatically changed to the date of termination. So it was very clear that they did not have work authorization and were required to leave the country. What wasn't clear was, is it fifteen days? Is it sixty days? Is there no grace period? You know, this was just it was outrageous. They did not communicate with the DSOs at all. They sent them no guidance. They had no idea until we gave them feedback from litigation that the position of the government was they were still maintaining valid status. Many institutions advised their students they could not attend class. And ICE came back and said, oh, of course they can attend class. We didn't say they couldn't attend class. You know? I it was just outrageous and crazy and poorly thought out in terms of an immigration enforcement action.

James Pittman: So what so faced with dozens of TROs from the federal courts, they've just they they decided to reverse themselves. So the the sense now is that they're, you know, basically, they're trying to think through a a legal pathway to get this done, where, you know, where the courts are not gonna be able to, you know, they're they're in other words, they're trying to think of a procedural way to get this done where people are not gonna have as good of a case when if they go to court and try to challenge it. So did they say when they expect to take further action on this, or is everybody who's been reinstated good to go back to school for the time being?

Amy Maldonado: I mean, they did not say that, but I think many of us are looking at arguing that this case has not been mooted out from the weasley language that they're using and backing off of. And also, there's the case law, you know, about there was some quote that I forget who it was provided in our ALO litigation listserv about, well, if we just let the government dismiss everything for mootness, they could just keep repeating the same unlawful action and then back off when somebody sues them. So there is an argument that the case is not mooted out. I think for my clients, and I'm still confirming that my new plaintiffs, my new 20 plaintiffs, have all had their SEVIS records restored. I actually had to file we got our TRO last Tuesday. Today is Monday, the twenty eighth. We got our TRO last Tuesday, and the government had not reinstated my client's SEVIS records by Friday. I filed a motion to for an order to show cause as to why the defendants, Christy Noem and Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, should not be held in contempt. And my client's Evis records were restored by 4PM that afternoon. So, I mean, they were not obeying the court orders from around the country, and that's a fourteen day order. So for them to let it go to Friday afternoon from a Tuesday is pretty outrageous.

James Pittman: Now let's talk about some of the the legal issues here. So in your view, what was lacking in due process with the original terminations? Let's just run through it.

Amy Maldonado: I mean, so there was no notice to anybody, not to the students, not to the DSOs. The DSOs figured this out by looking at their own databases and seeing who'd been terminated. There was no opportunity to respond in a meaningful way, and that includes to the visa revocations, which normally, you know, when you get a visa revocation, you have an opportunity to respond to them. And I I actually advised somebody on a who got arrested for a DUI, and the blood alcohol test came back at 0%, and it was clearly just completely wrongful. And normally, you can respond to the state department in normal times, which are not now, and say, hey, here's the blood alcohol test. Here's the dismissal of charges. Can you please not make me go to a panel physician? So there was none of that. And then for some students who didn't realize their SEVIS was terminated who were working, if they didn't know right away, they were working without authorization without their knowledge, which actually is an offense for which you can be removed from SEVIS, which was part of why so many of us requested retroactive language in the TRO. So my TRO says that the SEVIS record has to be reinstated retroactively to the date of termination. And when I checked with my DSO today, he said that you can see when it was reactivated and you can see that it was terminated, but they can't actually tell if it's retroactive. It certainly did not remove original action from the system the way we would have wanted.

James Pittman: Okay. Is the Administrative Procedures Act implicated in the way that they conducted these terminations? I mean, would were any of the claims that in any of the cases based on that?

Amy Maldonado: Yeah. I think most of the claims were based on APA violations. Okay. And then in the contrary to law, it was contrary to the Immigration and Nationality Act, and also contrary to due process guarantees in the constitution.

James Pittman: And what does the APA require?

Amy Maldonado: So the APA basically is a statute. I explain it to my clients that it's a statute that tells the government what they have to do and how they have to do it. So for example, and this is the example I give when I'm doing APA explanations based on unreasonable delay, you wouldn't expect to go to your, like, Department of Public Safety or DMV and apply for a driver's license and not hear back for three years. That just is not a way government is supposed to function. And the federal government, although it does function that way frequently in immigration, is also not supposed to function that way. So basically, the APA requires government the government agencies to adjudicate the cases before them in a reasonable amount of time to make decisions that are not arbitrary capricious, an abuse of discretion or otherwise contrary to law, and that gives relief when that doesn't And that's for individuals. For there are also APE provisions that allow you to challenge, for example, rulemaking, federal rulemaking or regulations. But that is how we employed it here. And so there was no legal I mean, the government can't just allege that it has the ability to do this and then do it and not be able to cite to any provision in the statute or regulations other than the general charge that ICE is supposed to monitor students through SEVP and SEVIS authority for doing whatever they wanna do when they wanna do it. Based on criminal context that and this was key to our complaint, and I know other people did not do this, but we accepted a pool of clients whose criminal contacts had no impact under the INA. Mhmm. They were not inadmissible. They were not deportable. They were not, I mean, they were not subject to any penalty, but the government was terminating their records in SEVIS, and that's unlawful. And Yeah. No. I kept saying to my clients, for a government that complains so much about worrying about how everything is illegal, they sure do a lot of illegal things.

James Pittman: Yeah. I mean, to say the least, and when you think about I can think of a certain individual who's very prominent, who insisted on the full measure of due process.

Amy Maldonado: Would that person be a felon by any chance? Just out. He's a blonde.

James Pittman: So let's take a let's take a look at some of the damage that has been caused by this. I mean, I've heard some horror stories about people who are in their final year or or final semester of college who had their records terminated, and, you know, how they how they finished their degree has been left totally up in the air. Hopefully, some of those situations are being rectified, and they'll get enough time to finish now. But but who knows? Like, what's your sense of what some of the damage is? Do you know of students who actually do you know first of all, do know of anyone who actually was deported or who left The US due to these terminations?

Amy Maldonado: Yeah. Unfortunately, a lot of universities, when this first happened, advised their students they were required to leave the country immediately. So I had one consultation with somebody who was leaving that night, and I said, you know, he's like, if I go, can I come back? And I said, no. Because once you're out of here, you're going to be asking the state department to exercise its discretion in your favor, and you don't have a right to that, and we can't help you overcome a visa denial. So once you're gone, it's kinda all over for you. I did refer those people to Jesse Bless because I'm I also said that to some of the people who got caught up in the fake OPT employer thing and got dinged with fraud findings, even though, like, my plaintiff in that case, he he had signed up for this OPT deal and then realized that there was something very wrong with it. So he'd only been on it twenty eight days. He quit. He, like, transferred his OPT somewhere else. And I sent him to Jesse because Jesse Bless was filing a multi plaintiff lawsuit about all the fraud findings because they were not, you know, again, meeting requirements of due process, disclosing the grounds, and giving people an opportunity to respond before they ding them with this fraud finding that was a, you know, material misrepresentation, lifetime and admissibility, etcetera. So he actually hired Jesse, and a year later, emailed me. And he was like, I know you said you didn't think this was gonna work, but once we got it overturned, the state department gave me my h one b visa and I got back in. So I actually did send people who left the country to Jesse because Jesse and I agreed somebody needs to advocate for them. And the other cases I sent out were DUIs and DWIs. Because they didn't fit the way we constructed our lawsuit, they do have immigration consequences even if it's just an arrest because of the prudential revocations and the requirement that they go to a panel physician and be examined for a class a medical condition. So there were cases that we didn't take that we still thought were valid that we sent to other attorneys like Brian Green and Chuck Cook and, you know, and of course, Chuck and Greg and Jeff Joseph and Jesse are all working on that class action. The sign up cut off a couple hours ago, I think. But today is the cutoff to join the class action. And they're still pursuing that class action because they believe that there's still an issue.

James Pittman: Mhmm. Yeah. It'd be interesting to see how that's received, given this backtracking, whether, you know, the court finds the issues moot at this point in And

Amy Maldonado: is there a final I mean, one of the things they could argue is there's no longer a final decision because the SEVIS record was unterminated, so what are you contesting?

James Pittman: Right. Exact right. That's and that's part of the APA as well. Right? You have to exhaust all administrative remedies in order to go to court. Right. Let's so and and in terms of who was affected by this, was it I mean, can you identify any patterns in terms of who they were targeting? I mean, we see clearly with not with the SEVIS terminations, but with the apprehension of students, they did target politically active students, particularly those who had been critical around the Middle East policies.

Amy Maldonado: Yeah. Was not true for any of my plaintiffs. Most of

James Pittman: my

Amy Maldonado: plaintiffs were, like, computer they were STEM field people who weren't very interested in politics, and one of them was working on landing humans safely on the moon and Mars. You know, a lot of them were just working on various technical issues in grad school. So a lot of our clients were Indian. Significant amount were Chinese, but I think that's mostly just who are foreign students in The United States. We had some people from Nepal, from The Middle East, from, you know, just a couple other places. I think one or two from Africa.

James Pittman: I mean, so you don't identify any pattern that would suggest a reason as to why the administration targeted these people after they had been validly issued student visas, and they were otherwise presumably, otherwise in good academic standing.

Amy Maldonado: Yeah. The pattern is they had some kind of contact with US law enforcement.

James Pittman: Okay.

Amy Maldonado: So for example, my client who was arrested and then all his charges were dismissed and he was completely vindicated. Nevertheless, something. Our pregnant client who had a dismissed speeding ticket in Nebraska from 2020 at a US citizen husband and a 14 US citizen child and was afraid to file her adjustment because she'd heard horror stories of spouses of US citizens out of status getting arrested at their biometrics or, you know, coming back into the country from Puerto Rico, or we've seen those cases on the news. So, yeah, the the issue was a contact with US law enforcement regardless of what happened in the case, whether the charge rose to a level of immigration consequences at all Okay. Even if there was a conviction. Like, there it seemed like and this is what I told the judge. It appears that somebody ran an algorithm between the FBI database and the SEVIS database, and any time there was a match terminated those records. In some cases, our clients were, I think, in one, and I heard from other attorneys, a client was a witness. That doesn't I mean, that's crazy.

James Pittman: That is crazy. I mean, that's that's that's completely crazy, and that that does suggest that there was no real analysis done, that it was that it's I mean, that that that makes it sound more plausible what you're saying about an algorithm because it also fits the pattern, It fits an unfortunate pattern of overreaching, like, how the administration's doing several things, which is over like, dramatically overreaching and then only backtracking to the extent that you have to depending on what the pushback is. So it sounds like they just, like, put out a dragnet and got all these people, and then, you know, now now, I guess, they didn't anticipate. I don't think they anticipated as much pushback as they're getting from the courts, especially being receptive to these claims. They probably thought they could get away with a lot more of it than they are. But that's that's just crazy, somebody being a witness in a criminal case and having their SEVIS record terminated just because, like, their name is somewhere in some, you know, justice system database.

Amy Maldonado: Now in court, the US Attorney's Office argued that the State Department determined whose records were gonna be revoked, and requested that ICE revoke their records. The problem with that is, in some cases, the visas were revoked after the records were terminated. And in my original complaint, I called this a Doge special. I don't know if Doge was involved, but it certainly sounds like Doge,

James Pittman: It fits the pattern.

Amy Maldonado: It does. So we're not sure if we're wrong or right about that. I really wanted to get to Discovery, so I am very cranky about them backing down, except my clients are happy, obviously. But they had a TRO. Their records were gonna be reinstated anyway, and we were gonna win the preliminary injunction. So what I feel is that we're not going to get to look behind the curtain if these cases die here.

James Pittman: Yeah. I mean, it's it's it'd be very interesting to see. I have this sense that we're we're only scratching the surface in terms of finding out what's underneath the surface, where where this all came from and who was involved and how they how they went about this. I mean, there's the discovery will be very interesting, you know, and depositions and and all of that, finding out, you know, how this was actually thought up and who conducted it and how. But what were some of the responses from the the courts that you saw? I mean, what stood out to you noteworthy in terms of how the courts have been ruling so far?

Amy Maldonado: First of all, of more than 50 orders entered, the vast I think I only saw two that denied the TRO. So courts were in we're talking about appointees appointed by every president of both parties, including president Trump, and her TROs about this. I listened to a hearing that Brian Greene had before judge Randolph Moss in DC, and he was just very aggravated with the US attorney's office. He said, you know, how I mean, I heard this was true of other judges also, but judges were asking, is this person in status or aren't they? And the US Attorneys couldn't tell them. And, you know, judge Moss, I believe, was the one who said, well, if these immigration attorneys don't know and you don't know and I don't know, how are they supposed to know? You know, like, this this is outrageous. And so the other thing was, judge Moss specifically demanded the appearance of someone from ICE with authority to testify about this, and the declarations that were entered were declarations by Andre Watson, who is a career ICE official in charge of SEVP, and his declarations were very carefully parsed. So in my brief, I said that the government was engaged in artful paltering, which is the use of true statements to mislead. You know, it's sort of like it was he said, we did not terminate their f one status. We terminated their SEVIS record, but they don't mention what is the impact of terminating that SEVIS record on work authorization. What's gonna happen to them? Are they subject to detention and arrest? So one of the things also is the government carefully said, we are not currently considering detaining or arresting these plaintiffs. So to me, when I hear this government say the word currently, it means the minute this litigation is over, they're going to consider it then. Mhmm. Are very for people who yeah. They're careful in what they represent to courts and that yeah. You I mean, you have to just be really careful in in accepting their word and listen closely to what say. So judges were really outraged, including our judge in the Eastern District Of Michigan.

James Pittman: So given this latest, you know, reversal for the time being, what are some of the challenges that these international students who had their status terminated and then had it had that reversed? What are they con face what should they be concerned about? I mean, what are some problems they're facing?

Amy Maldonado: I mean, right now, they're reinstated. So they've gone back to work. They're going to classes. I think they started going to classes as soon as I started representing in court that they never terminated their f one status, and they were free to go to classes even though their institutions were telling them they couldn't come. Like, our pregnant mom and married to a US citizen, she is a TA in her graduate program, so she wasn't able to give her clients their or her students their final exams because she couldn't work, couldn't go onto campus. But now I think it's more the impact on their mental state. I know some people's clients decided after this had been accepted into higher level graduate school in The US and decided to leave instead because it makes you feel very insecure and obviously targeted and afraid of being detained, afraid of being deported. And I mean, what we've been seeing are people taken in chains onto planes and, you know, sent back to their home country. So I think really, right now, it is the kind of the effect on your mental health wellness. Now I've told all my clients, I don't think this is over, as I said to you at the beginning. So I believe that they're gonna try a second, you know, to take a second bite at the apple after doing some rule making, publishing something in the Federal Register, and we'll see what that looks like. But I feel it, my plaintiffs in particular have a great case if they try to clean it up and then come back and do it again.

James Pittman: I'm I'm still a little unclear on exactly what they're trying to say, that they terminated the SEVIS records, but they didn't terminate the f one status. Like, how are they arguing that?

Amy Maldonado: Let me see. So it's this declaration from Andre Watson. But what I thought was interesting is I wondered, personally, if they didn't want Andre Watson to testify because if he's subject to questioning by plaintiff's counsel as a career ICE employee, he's gonna tell the truth. And so they really as soon as the judges started insisting on somebody with ICE, with authority testifying, they seem to back down. And that makes me very, very suspicious. I feel very suspicious overall. Alright. So what does our declaration say? It says, Andre Watson, yada yada. And I saw these from other people's cases also. I mean, basically, the beginning is national security, national security. We had set up because of nine eleven, blah blah blah, national security. And then he identifies each one of our plaintiffs, and he makes their whatever their history was in the criminal database sound as bad as possible. So for example, if you have somebody who was arrested for peeing in public, that's usually a charge of indecent exposure, which sounds terrible, but is not that big of a deal. So he just says, we their information was run against criminal databases and was a verified match to a criminal history record for an arrest on date for crime of whatever by whichever law enforcement agency. At that time, the disposition of this charge was unknown based on so and so's criminal history. On April 4, SEVP amended the SEVIS record to reflect this information by setting the record designation to terminated. So after running through that, he then said, prudential visa revocation absent other factors does not make an individual amendable to removal. There's a typo. It says amendable. And terminating a record in SEVIS does not terminate an individual's nonimmigrant status in The United States. The statute and regulations do not provide SEVP the authority to terminate nonimmigrant status by terminating a SEVIS record. And SEVP has never claimed that it terminated the non immigrant status of plaintiffs. Furthermore, the authority to issue or revoke visas for non immigrant students lies with the Department of State, not SEVP. Terminating a record within SEVIS does not effectuate a visa revocation. So those are all technically true statements, but they create a misleading impression. And so the other thing that was interesting was we have a colleague who, Daniel Oldenburg, who during the same time period got a notice of intent to deny a change of status from f one to h one b saying your SEVIS record was terminated, and therefore, you're not maintaining f one status. So we were used a redacted version of that in our lawsuits, and DHS disavowed it. They said that was an error. USCIS made a mistake. And so we told Daniel, hey, we've got this in a court transcript. And he was like, great. Give it to me because I'm attaching it to my response to the NOID. Yeah.

James Pittman: So So they're saying that contact with law enforcement, this is what they originally said, justified them terminating the SEVIS record, but I'm not sure. I I'm still not sure exactly what the legal where they claim that the legal authority to do that was. But that in doing so, that they they didn't actually terminate the student's f one status. But it had the effect of the schools telling the students they couldn't attend classes.

Amy Maldonado: Right. And also, they it had the undisputable effect of revoking everybody's employment authorization on OPT, some OPT, CPT, on campus employment.

James Pittman: Was it okay. And but nobody I mean, practically, no. Did anybody receive any written notification that their EAD had been revoked? Or No. No.

Amy Maldonado: Sometimes after they were notified by the schools, they got an email from SEBP, but that was usually several days after the actual termination took place, which means that for those people on OPT, STEM OPT, CBT, they had no idea. And mind you, all these people have an active SCBP portal that you can log into when you're on OPT. You can't do that as a student, but it would have been very easy for them to be emailed immediately upon termination.

James Pittman: Yes.

Amy Maldonado: And that did not happen.

James Pittman: So I'm wondering, first of all, what, you know, what do you think their what do you can can we hypothesize as to what their plan going forward, DHS, would be in terms of how they're gonna try to accomplish much of what they just tried to accomplish? I mean, think

Amy Maldonado: they're gonna do some rulemaking and say that, you know, SEVP has the right to terminate students under these circumstances, blah blah blah, and then try to do it again. And when they do that rulemaking, that rulemaking will be challenged under the EPA in federal court as basically a pretextual. And I think they gave us a great record to argue that that's a pretext. Also, fun fact, they could not they could literally not cite where they got their authority other than the Homeland Security Act generally.

James Pittman: Right. It's almost like a it reminds me of like a pen it's like a penumbra. It's like that, you know, you you had contact with law enforcement. Therefore, it makes intuitive sense to us that we could terminate your SEVIS record, but it's, like, not that's I'm trying to I'm just trying to rack my brain as to where the I'm trying to think, like, is that actually stated anywhere that if you have contact with law enforcement, you're you know, SEVIS can revoke your your terminate Absolutely

Amy Maldonado: not, which is what we laid out for the courts, and it's why the courts were so unified in their response to this, regardless of judicial philosophy. You know, they were not having it. None of them.

James Pittman: Yeah. No, I mean, that's unbelievable, really. The more that you learn about it, the more shocking it is.

Amy Maldonado: I mean, I wanna say it's a good thing Stephen Miller didn't go to law school, but I don't wanna give him any ideas. So, although, you know, assuming we don't have a third presidential term for life, hopefully, his influence will be going away soon.

James Pittman: Yeah. Let's let's hope. Let's let's hope. I mean, did now, do in observing this, I mean, did you can you think of anything that the schools could have done? Do you think the schools overall, from what you can see in the DSOs, did as much as they could? Do you think there's anything that they can do?

Amy Maldonado: Yeah. So I can tell you that the DSO that worked with us was fantastic. He advised everybody, we've never seen this before. Go get legal counsel. Here are some people we recommend. He supplied a super detailed, I wanna say it was seven or eight page declaration rebutting all the arguments we were hearing ICE making in the other cases, you know, saying that, no, we didn't get any communication from SEVP that they were doing this. No, we didn't get guidance on what it meant. He was amazing. I know of other schools, in particular, I will name names because this is not my client, the University of Michigan who told their students immediately they needed to leave. And one of their students contacted us from abroad, and I was just like, I can't help you. Call Jesse. But I really think, like, some schools went to bat for their students, and others reacted in fear of the government. And I find that really problematic in this day and age. But I also understand universities in general are being targeted right now, and I'm not super clear if this was an attack on immigrants who have been a scapegoat for this administration or if it was attack on universities because universities have been US universities are subsidized by international student tuition big time. And so it's clear that Donald Trump has a huge animus toward universities generally and has, you know, decided to take on Harvard in particular, and there are all kinds of schools forming, like, defense compacts right now and taking them on. So I'm not sure who this was meant to hurt the most, but I think it definitely boomeranged and hit the administration.

James Pittman: So Yeah. I mean, it shows I mean, it shows really a betrayal of the spirit of why we want students to come to The United States. We want students to come to The United States, First of all, to benefit to benefit our university system, to attract, you know, top notch students who, you know, enrich the research programs and perform the research and and do do the scholarly work. But at the same time, you know, the the philosophy is we're making it so punitive. We're we're making it so we're making it so punitive and almost putting aspect, like a dehumanizing aspect into it, which is like, yeah. We're giving you the great privilege of coming to, you know, school in The United States, but, you know, you better not have any opinions or do anything that we, in any way, shape, or form in any aspect of your life that we disagree with or, you know, not, you know, get drunk at a party on campus or or whatever because, you know, you'll be out of here pronto. I mean, so it's it's like it's it's really, it's a hostility toward immigrants, which is contaminating the the underlying, you know, policy motivations and spirit about what having international students should really be about. I mean, do you do you have any sense of how this is being perceived by potential international students? Do you think it's having a

Amy Maldonado: Yeah.

James Pittman: Already having a negative impact?

Amy Maldonado: There was an article, and I don't remember where it was published, but it said, like, interest in coming to The US for graduate school is down by, like, 40 plus percent. I mean, it is definitely

James Pittman: Having a big impact.

Amy Maldonado: Having a big impact, and that's gonna have a big impact on the bottom line of universities. In addition to the Trump administration's destruction of the Department of Education and transfer of all student loan responsibilities to the small business administration, which is woefully woefully unprepared and understaffed. I mean, I expect to see the university system in The US take a huge financial hit fall or spring, no later than fall or spring. And that, of course universities are huge employers in The United States. I mean, it's just really startling how Donald Trump has decided that he's gonna roll into office and kneecap The US economy in every way possible. And, you know, we have been a center of innovation in the world partly because of our culture and also partly because of our business culture being kinda like the Wild West as opposed to Canada where they're never had a market crash and are very highly regulated. But we're gonna I feel like he's living in a time gone by, and he's really rapidly assisting China's, you know, ascension to preeminent world power and us becoming like The UK. Like, the sun is setting on our empire.

James Pittman: Yeah. I I I think those I think those are astute observations, and I think things are, in fact, moving in that trend. Think in in some sense, he's he's handing the world to China on a silver platter. I mean, they couldn't have asked. Neither China nor Russia could have asked for even have hoped that they would get this much help from a US administration in accomplishing their geostrategic goals. And and for us, it's just giving us a black eye, and it's also betraying sort of like it's it's really damaging or damaging badly our brand. Our brand is, as an open society, really, that people wanna come to because, you know, you have freedom of expression. You have academic freedom or you had academic freedom. And these actions are like yeah. I mean, for the administration, it's like they're getting they're they're they're killing two birds with one stone. Right? They get to lash out at universities and take a sledgehammer to a source of university, you know, prestige and funding in the form of international students, and they get to lash out at immigrants in general, you know, and and for and and and advance their, you know, xenophobic sort of, like, nativist kind of, like, don't come here. Don't come here. Only you know, kind of attitude toward toward immigrants and vis even visitors. Even visitors, even foreign students, anybody who wants to come here is is being made to feel like, you know, it's you're you're a you're a guest in the home of somebody who doesn't really want you there, but they'll tolerate you there for just a

Amy Maldonado: little bit. Speaking of killing other industries off, like tourism, you know, Germany has a travel warning about coming to The United States now. I mean, how much more damage is this man gonna do to The US economy? And it's really funny because I am a child of the nineteen seventies. You look younger than me. But I grew up on Schoolhouse Rock. You know, I always wanted to be a lawyer, and I didn't know any lawyers as children, so I'm not sure why other than Schoolhouse Rock and maybe Perry Mason. So my kids are indigenous. They're citizens of the Comanche Nation, and they tell me they're 21 and 23 now, and they're like, mom, you are so brainwashed by Schoolhouse Rock. Like, this country was built on slavery and genocide, and this is totally 100% in line with the history of The United States. They're not wrong, you know? I mean

James Pittman: It's a checkered I mean, there's there's checkered aspects to the history, but at the same time, the society has shown that it does have the ability to advance people's rights. I mean, I can just I mean, you can look at, the advances that were made with civil rights, minority civil rights, from 1965 until the present. It's definitely advanced a lot. I mean, I can tell you LGB LGB rights now is a a different world from when I grew up. It was a very, you know, punitive, stigmatizing environment across the board in public, and now it's much, much, much better than it was. So this society does have the ability to to advance rights. Now, for each one of those advances, you know, there's been a segment of the population that's never accepted it, they've always wanted to go back.

Amy Maldonado: I mean, Reconstruction is a perfect example of all the progress that was made during Reconstruction, and then all the backsliding that occurred after that in the Jim Crow South. But I also look at I mean, I hear what you're saying, and I I am an optimist by nature. But I'm also like, we have the opportunity to overturn Korematsu, and we didn't. You know, we have upheld Japanese internment in like, in the memories of my children. So we kind of are also terrible. Just like No.

James Pittman: I mean, both things are true, and I don't think I'm particularly optimistic. I think I'm I think, personally, I think I'm very, very realistic on human nature and on the society. I I would not count myself as an optimist, but neither am I like a terrible pessimist. I think we we have the capacity to go both forward and backward, and we've done we've done both of those on different occasions. I mean, my my attitude is things can go either way, and it's just the balance of factors in society, cultural, the public discourse, things that go on in the government that make us go forward or backward. I don't think we're predestined to go in either direction. But let me just get back a little bit to our our topic before we get too far afield. Are there any, like, broad broad scale recommendations for policy reforms, either regulations or legislation that you you can think of that would you know, should be enacted to kind of, like, prevent this kind of erratic chaotic situation?

Amy Maldonado: I mean, I think we've discovered throughout the Trump administrations one and two that a lot of things we thought were requirements of law were actually just norms, and so those things need to be enshrined into law. You know? I mean, I think due process, which obviously is part of the constitution, but I also think we've done terrible harm in immigration law with, for example, the jurisdiction stripping provisions in the INA. We need as much judicial review as possible because judicial review is what keeps the government honest. And so by taking away the ability of the judiciary to do anything other than a petition for review, I think that's been really harmful. I mean, I also think it should be clear. I think the Department of State actually needs oversight, which they don't have because of the doctrine of counselor nonreviewability. And I think that I get that the Department of State is also the gatekeeper to prevent, like, the nine eleven hijackers from going to The US, which they did a terrible job of doing because they all came into The US. But and in my opinion as an immigration attorney, I see far too often they bend over backwards and don't let people in with valid reasons to come in for really silly things. Like, I once had a I do I have a sports immigration practice, which you know about me. I represent five Major League Baseball teams and a bunch of baseball players. And I once had a consulate deny a tourist visa, I believe it was a renewal, to the mother-in-law of an MLB player who was coming to be with her daughter when their second child was born. Because when they asked her what she was gonna do, she said, oh, I'm gonna take care of the other baby while my daughter is, like, nursing and recovering and etcetera. And they're like, oh, you're coming to be a domestic. You're the nanny. I am like, grandma is not the nanny. Come on. You know, this is ridiculous. And it took That is ridiculous. A year. It took me a year to get that undone, which for normal people, you can't get it undone. But with this particular baseball player, we had the intervention of a senator's office and a bunch of people harassing the state department, and, you know, it got undone. So but I've seen I've seen that recently, Like, somebody who's, you know, helping out at in around the house of their the person who's sponsoring them to come visit to US is accused of, like, unlawful employment as a landscaper. You know? It's just crazy.

James Pittman: Yeah. Clarity on a lot of these standards is definitely is definitely sorely needed. And I I think that when this era finally does come to an end one way or the other, I think, there's a lot that's gonna have to be done to, you know, to reinstitute checks and balances and actually concretize and and and put into law some things that had just been customary. Yeah. But that's a that's a topic for another podcast because there's certainly, it would certainly take a number of years to kind of remove and and repair a lot of things that have brought us to this point. But, Amy, I wanna thank you for joining us today to talk about this student visa and see this termination controversy, the whole student visa revocations, and then backtracking. It's it's really a it's a it's a messy, messy affair affecting thousands of people, and you're right in the thick of it. So thanks a lot for your time discussing this with us today, and I'm sure we're gonna have you back in the future to talk about other topics. Thanks again. Amy Maldonado from East Lansing, Michigan. Thank you.

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