The Trump administration on Friday announced it's restoring visas to international students who had their visas revoked.
“All visas have a discretionary reason, they can be revoked for discretionary reasons, which is a little frightening personally,” said Juan Jose Esquerre-Bustamante, an international student from Chile studying at San Diego State University.
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He says he's relieved to hear the Trump administration began reinstating F-1 student visas it had revoked a few weeks ago.
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SIGN UP “They don’t have to tell you what you did or if you did anything at all. There’s no real relegation at all so that’s a little frightening for sure,” Esquerre-Bustamante said.
Although he wasn’t personally affected, he received a campus email earlier this month informing him that some students’ visas were revoked.
SDSU confirmed to NBC 7 that three of the four international student visas that were recently revoked have been reinstated.
UC San Diego also confirmed that 18 of its students have had their visas and records reactivated, but 17 remain in terminated status.
“They were students who were involved in their First Amendment, in a way, to speak their voice, which is very, very important for the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. as a whole,” Esquerre-Bustamante said.
Although the federal government has not explained the reasons behind the terminations, many experts believed it targeted international students who have participated in protests or have had previous charges.
“The good thing is that I’m form Germany, and I feel like the U.S. and Germany have a good relationship, so I was not too worried about it," said Yannick Dittric, who is also an international student at SDSU.
A lawyer for the Justice Department said Friday that records for international students will be reactivated for the time being as Immigration and Customs Enforcement crafts a new policy that will provide a framework for status record termination.
Immigration attorneys said the status termination will still appear on students’ records, which could possibly jeopardize any future applications for green cards or other relief.
In a statement, UCSD said, “UC San Diego continues to monitor SEVIS records closely and is working directly with impacted students to provide them with relevant information."
Meanwhile, SDSU said given student privacy laws, personal information about the students cannot be shared.
