DHS Stripped Students of Status With No Notice — Here’s Who Sued and Why

Beginning in March 2025, the Department of Homeland Security terminated the SEVIS records of thousands of international students without notice or explanation. Students with no criminal convictions, no unauthorized employment, and no immigration violations suddenly found themselves marked “out of status.” Lawsuits followed within weeks, from individual students in Iowa, Indiana, and Michigan to a 100-plaintiff class action in New Hampshire and a sweeping institutional fight brought by Harvard University.

The cases are not one lawsuit. They are dozens, filed across federal district courts including the Southern District of Iowa, the District of Massachusetts, the District of New Hampshire, and the Eastern District of Michigan. Most allege violations of the Administrative Procedure Act and the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause. As of June 2026, several have produced preliminary injunctions and one, Harvard’s case against DHS, is now before the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

Homeland Security Student Visa Lawsuit Timeline and Updates

March 2025 — ICE Launches the Student Criminal Alien Initiative

Homeland Security Investigations launched an internal program called the Student Criminal Alien Initiative. Ten to twenty ICE employees spent weeks combing through records belonging to 1.3 million student visa holders.

They were searching for any interaction with law enforcement. A dismissed traffic stop counted. So did a decade-old misdemeanor.

March 2025 — Nearly 300 Students Lose Status in a Matter of Days

The New York Times reported that nearly 300 international students were abruptly stripped of their ability to remain in the United States within a short window in March. Universities discovered the terminations only after checking SEVIS themselves.

No termination letters arrived. No hearings were offered. Students learned they were “out of status” from a database, not from the government.

March 2025 — Rümeysa Öztürk Detained in Massachusetts

Tufts doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk had her F-1 visa revoked after she co-authored a student newspaper op-ed criticizing her university’s response to campus protests. Six masked ICE agents arrested her on a Somerville street.

She was transported to detention in Louisiana. Öztürk’s case became a flashpoint nationally, cited in later First Circuit briefing as evidence of viewpoint-based targeting.

April 11, 2025 — Homeland Security Demands Harvard’s Student Records

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem sent Harvard’s International Office a letter demanding records on every student visa holder across Harvard’s 13 schools. The letter gave Harvard ten business days to comply.

The demand covered participation in protests. Harvard turned over what it said the law required. DHS called the response insufficient.

April 18, 2025 — ACLU-NH Files 100-Plaintiff Class Action

The ACLU of New Hampshire and the law firm Shaheen and Gordon filed a class action in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire. The suit represented more than 100 international students across New England and Puerto Rico.

Plaintiff Haoyang An, a New Hampshire graduate student, had invested over $329,000 in his U.S. education. None of the named plaintiffs had committed a crime, lied on an application, or worked illegally, the three grounds DHS regulations actually allow for termination.

April 25, 2025 — DOJ Reverses Course Nationally

The Department of Justice announced it would no longer seek removal of students whose F-1 status had been terminated without cause. The reversal affected thousands of students nationwide.

The timing was not coincidental. Legal filings and early judicial rulings in New Hampshire and elsewhere had created mounting pressure. The government blinked before a single case reached final judgment.

April 29, 2025 — Dartmouth Student Wins Injunction

A federal judge in Concord, New Hampshire granted a preliminary injunction restoring the F-1 status of Xiaotian Liu, a Dartmouth doctoral student in computer science. The injunction let Liu continue his research for the duration of the case.

This was one of the first individual wins. It would not be the last.

May 22, 2025 — DHS Revokes Harvard’s SEVP Certification

DHS notified Harvard that it had revoked the university’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, effective immediately. Without SEVP certification, Harvard cannot enroll any F-1 or J-1 student.

Thousands of enrolled students and more than 300 dependents faced an impossible choice. Transfer schools immediately or lose lawful status. The notice came days before graduation.

May 23, 2025 — Harvard Sues, Wins Same-Day TRO

Harvard filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts against DHS, the State Department, and the Department of Justice. The complaint argued the revocation was retaliatory and violated the First Amendment and the APA.

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs granted a temporary restraining order within hours. The case is Harvard University v. Noem, No. 1:25-cv-11472.

June 4, 2025 — Trump Issues a Proclamation to Route Around the Injunction

President Trump issued a proclamation invoking the Immigration and Nationality Act, suspending entry for any international student holding a Harvard-sponsored visa. This was a second attempt at the same outcome through a different legal vehicle.

Here is where it gets complicated. A proclamation carries different legal weight than an agency revocation, and Harvard had to fight it as a separate claim.

June 20, 2025 — Burroughs Blocks the Proclamation, Reinstates SEVP

Judge Burroughs issued a preliminary injunction blocking both the May 22 revocation and the June 4 proclamation. Harvard’s SEVP certification remained intact while the case proceeded.

The same day, President Trump stated publicly that Harvard and the administration were in settlement talks. No settlement materialized.

July 1–22, 2025 — Iowa Students Win Protection, DHS Fights Back

Four University of Iowa students and graduates, fearing deportation over terminated SEVIS records, won a temporary restraining order from U.S. District Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger. On July 1, federal lawyers cited staff shortages to win more time to respond.

By July 21, DHS moved to deport an Iowa couple who were actively suing the agency. Judge Ebinger rejected the government’s arguments on July 22, finding no suggestion the students had met any of DHS’s own standards for revoking status.

August 6, 2025 — DHS Stipulates It Won’t Use the Harvard Letter

The government stipulated to the Massachusetts court that the May 22 letter would not be used to revoke Harvard’s SEVP certification. Harvard’s lawyers were not satisfied.

The government continued pursuing separate administrative review proceedings against Harvard’s F-1 and J-1 programs. The underlying threat had not disappeared. It had only changed shape.

August 2025 — DHS Seeks Dismissal of the Iowa Case

Homeland Security moved to dismiss the Iowa students’ lawsuit, arguing it had complied with court orders by restoring SEVIS records to active status and that the case was now moot. Acting assistant director Akil Baldwin submitted a sworn declaration explaining the agency’s reasoning.

Baldwin said the four students’ criminal histories, limited to misdemeanor-level offenses like drunken driving, triggered review under the Student Criminal Alien Initiative. The students’ attorney called those same offenses irrelevant to any lawful basis for status termination.

October 2025 — ACLU of Indiana Sues on Behalf of Seven Students

The ACLU of Indiana filed suit against DHS on behalf of seven international students whose status had been terminated without explanation. Six were Chinese nationals attending Purdue University or Indiana University Indianapolis. One was a Nigerian national at Notre Dame.

Two of the seven were scheduled to graduate that May. The complaint alleged Fifth Amendment due process violations and APA violations identical in structure to the Iowa and New Hampshire complaints.

January 20, 2026 — First Circuit Hears Harvard’s Appeal

The Trump administration appealed Judge Burroughs’s injunction to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, docketed as No. 25-1627. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell led a coalition of 21 state attorneys general filing an amicus brief urging affirmance.

The brief argued the administration had engaged in “a nationwide campaign of targeting international students and institutions” who held disfavored viewpoints. It cited Öztürk’s detention and the case of a Wellesley-area researcher held for months over undeclared frog embryos.

What DHS Regulations Actually Require for Termination

This is the core allegation across every one of these cases: DHS terminated student status for reasons its own regulations do not permit.

Federal regulation 8 C.F.R. § 214.4 lays out narrow grounds. A school’s SEVP certification can be revoked only after an administrative appeals process concludes, unless the school is suspected of criminal activity or poses a national security threat.

None of the named plaintiffs across the Iowa, Indiana, or New Hampshire cases met any of these standards. Judge Ebinger said so explicitly in her May 2025 ruling. No falsehood. No unauthorized work. No serious crime. No abandoned studies.

What changed was not the students’ conduct. What changed was an internal DHS policy decision to treat misdemeanor-level police contact, regardless of outcome, as grounds for review.

The Student Criminal Alien Initiative: What the Numbers Reveal

Andre Watson, DHS’s assistant director for national security, testified at a D.C. district court hearing about the scale of the screening effort. The testimony came in Doe v. Noem proceedings before Judge Ana Reyes.

The numbers tell their own story.

Watson confirmed under questioning that “objective evidence” of a status violation was not the trigger. A dismissed traffic stop was enough to enter a student’s name into the funnel.

Judge Reyes did not hide her reaction. She cited the government’s “utter lack of concern for human individuals who we have invited into our country” and who, in her words, had made American communities richer.

How SEVIS Termination Differs From Visa Revocation

The pattern is familiar to anyone who has followed these cases: confusion between two legally distinct actions is doing real damage.

A visa is a travel document. SEVIS status is a record of a student’s lawful presence inside the country. DHS’s own guidance states plainly that visa revocation, by itself, is not cause for SEVIS termination.

Watson’s declaration in Deore v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, No. 2:25-cv-11038 (E.D. Mich.), conceded the same point from the other direction. Terminating a SEVIS record does not, on its own, terminate a person’s underlying nonimmigrant status.

Both directions of that admission cut against the government’s actions in 2025. If a visa revocation does not automatically end SEVIS status, DHS lacked grounds to mark thousands of students “out of status.” If a SEVIS termination does not automatically end nonimmigrant status, ICE lacked grounds to treat those same students as deportable.

Defendant Response

DHS’s defense across these cases relies on a narrow legal claim: agency reversal moots the lawsuit. Once SEVIS records were restored to active status, the agency argued, there was nothing left for any court to decide.

The Iowa judge rejected this argument once already. Actions compelled by court order are not actions that moot a case, she ruled, when DHS raised a related point in an earlier motion.

DHS has also defended the underlying initiative on national security grounds. Acting assistant director Akil Baldwin testified that the Student Criminal Alien Initiative operated “in support of ICE efforts to identify, disrupt and dismantle transnational criminal enterprises and terrorist organizations.” Baldwin’s own examples, misdemeanor drunken driving charges among University of Iowa students, did not obviously connect to that stated purpose.

Harvard’s case adds a separate defense theory. White House spokesperson Liz Huston said Harvard “failed to protect its students, allowing harassment and discrimination to run rampant on its campus,” framing the SEVP revocation as a consequence of campus conduct rather than retaliation for protected speech.

What This Means for Affected Students

The practical reality facing F-1 and J-1 visa holders depends heavily on which court has jurisdiction over their case and whether they have already sued.

The April 25, 2025 DOJ policy reversal offers broad protection against removal for students terminated without cause. It does not, by itself, restore active SEVIS status or guarantee reinstatement at a student’s specific school.

Students who meet these criteria have a fact pattern matching the successful plaintiffs in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Indiana. An immigration attorney experienced in SEVIS litigation, not a general immigration attorney, is the right starting point.

Bissonnette of ACLU-NH indicated the organization would help confirm whether unrepresented students who had not sued the government would still have status fully reactivated. That confirmation process matters because injunctions in individual cases do not automatically extend to every similarly situated student nationwide.

Why Harvard’s Appeal Matters Beyond Harvard

The amicus brief filed by 21 state attorneys general made the strategic stakes explicit: “Harvard’s fight is not just about one university.”

If the First Circuit affirms Judge Burroughs’s injunction, it establishes appellate-level precedent that a presidential proclamation cannot be used to route around a district court order blocking an unlawful agency action. If the court reverses, the administration gains a clearer template for targeting any single institution through immigration enforcement.

One Harvard student’s description, quoted in the amicus brief, captures the position international students have occupied throughout this litigation: “International students are being used as poker chips in a battle between the White House and Harvard. It’s incredibly dehumanising.”

Students enrolled at institutions facing federal scrutiny over unrelated issues, campus speech, funding disputes, accreditation fights, now have reason to watch how their own university’s broader legal conflicts with the government play out. The SAVE Plan lawsuit dismissal showed a similar pattern: a federal program serving millions of people unwound through litigation focused on a narrow legal question, with consequences that landed on individuals who had no part in the underlying dispute.

What This Lawsuit Teaches Consumers

Here is the throughline across Iowa, Indiana, New Hampshire, Michigan, and Massachusetts: an agency changed its enforcement posture first and tried to find legal justification second.

That is backward. Federal regulations exist precisely to constrain agency discretion, particularly when the consequence is removal from the country for someone who has invested years and hundreds of thousands of dollars into an American education.

The lesson for any visa holder, student or otherwise, is that status review programs can move faster than the regulations meant to govern them. A traffic stop dismissed years ago should not function as a deportation trigger. Courts in five different districts have now said, in different words, that it cannot.

The lesson for institutions is sharper. Harvard had the resources to litigate immediately and at scale. Most universities and most individual students do not. The same federal overreach playing out against Harvard in Boston federal court played out, with far less media attention, against seven students represented by the ACLU of Indiana and four students represented by Iowa counsel. Those cases matter just as much. They simply have fewer headlines attached to them.

Students navigating university disputes during major federal scrutiny may also find the Toyota data tracking lawsuit instructive on a different point entirely: how slowly institutional accountability moves even when the underlying facts are not seriously disputed. The pattern of delay, partial compliance, and continued threat that DHS has used against Harvard echoes far beyond immigration law.

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