(Missoula, Mont.) -- Today, a federal court in Missoula granted a preliminary injunction preventing the Trump Administration from revoking the F-1 visa status for two international graduate students at Montana State University. The injunction allows the students to continue their studies and avoid facing the risk of detention and deportation.
The ruling comes after the ACLU of Montana filed a case in federal court on behalf of the students who had their F-1 student immigration status unlawfully and abruptly terminated by the Trump administration on April 4th with no notice or specified explanation as to why.
The actions taken against these students highlight the chaos surrounding federal immigration policies in higher education, where officials have made unprecedented nationwide moves to rescind and then later reinstate the legal status of numerous international students.
The court’s ruling today reinstates the students’ legal status for the duration of the lawsuit and finds that the government had likely violated the law when it arbitrarily and without notice terminated their records in the Student Exchange Visitor Information System. Despite no criminal convictions or immigration violations and having never participated in any protest in the United States or elsewhere, these students were told that they were “expected to depart the United States immediately due to the termination of their student status.”
“The court made it clear that the Trump administration cannot unilaterally circumvent the law and punish students who have followed all the rules by stripping them of their legal status, disrupting their studies, and putting them at risk of deportation,” said Akilah Deernose, Executive Director of the ACLU of Montana. “We are pleased that the Court granted a preliminary injunction to provide longer-term certainty and to preserve the status quo until the lawsuit is resolved. Now our clients have the assurance they need to continue their graduate studies, especially given the unpredictable actions undertaken by the Trump administration.”
The preliminary injunction means that, for the duration of the case, the government cannot terminate the plaintiffs' student status, arrest them without due process, or deport them. As a result, the students have been able to return to work and schools. Both graduate students have been diligently pursuing their degrees at MSU for many years. Plaintiff Roe has been working on his Ph.D. in electrical engineering/physics for the past six years, while Plaintiff Doe has been working towards her master’s degree in microbiology for the past three and a half years. Both are only a matter of months away from obtaining their advanced degrees.
To learn more about this case, please visit the case page for Roe v. Noem.
