The ACLU of Rhode Island, joined by other affiliates in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, and Puerto Rico, and law firm Shaheen & Gordon, has filed a class action lawsuit in federal court to try to stop the revocation of over 100 F-1 student visas in New England.
Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, said in a press release that “international students are a vital community in our state’s universities, and no administration should be allowed to circumvent the law to unilaterally strip students of status, disrupt their studies, and put them at risk of deportation.”
The ACLU of Rhode Island says the lawsuit comes as two undergraduate students at the Rhode Island School of Design and one undergraduate student at Brown University have had their visas revoked, along with a “small number” of recent graduates on year-long extensions of their visas while they work.
According to Steven Brown, executive director of the ACLU of Rhode Island, the lawsuit is meant to protect the most basic principles of due process for the international students.
“We have students here, lawfully here, studying or working based on their studies, suddenly find themselves unable to continue with their education based on a completely arbitrary determination made by federal agencies,” Brown said. “They haven’t been given a specific reason for the revocation of their student status. They’ve just been given vague, vague terms as to why.”
Brown said the case has been filed in the same federal district court in New Hampshire where a judge recently halted the visa revocation of a PhD student from China.
