A federal judge Thursday ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to reinstate the legal status of a University of Minnesota graduate student from China and told ICE to stop any action to impose immigration consequences on him.
The temporary restraining order from U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz, the chief judge for the district of Minnesota, marks the second injunction against the federal government in three days for terminating the legal status of Minnesota’s international students. Dozens of international students in Minnesota, and hundreds around the country, have reported the sudden termination of their legal status, often due to minor criminal citations.
Schiltz wrote that Ziliang Jin, 25, who is studying for a master’s degree in geographic information science and cartography “plainly faces irreparable harm” if his status were not immediately restored. Jin paid more than $17,000 in tuition for his spring semester, and faces “imminent risk” of being forced to drop his courses for this semester.
“More broadly, plaintiff faces the loss of the many years and many thousands of dollars he has invested in pursuing his degree,” Schiltz wrote.
David Wilson, a lawyer for Jin, said his client was “relieved” and “happy” about the judge’s order.
“He knows it’s just the first step,” Wilson said. “It doesn’t guarantee him anything. But at the same time, any peace of mind during this time is a welcome benefit from the court, and he’s glad to see that pushing back has value.”
Jin’s legal status in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) was terminated April 8, when government officials flagged him in a criminal records check. Jin has four petty misdemeanors on his record, a speeding ticket and three parking violations. His attorney David Wilson attributed the parking violations to difficulty learning Minnesota’s winter parking rules.
In a memorandum in support of the temporary restraining order, Wilson and his colleagues Katherine Santamaria Mendez, Gabriela Anderson and Cameron Giebink noted that under Minnesota law petty misdemeanors are not considered crimes.
“The Court should observe that the conduct presented here is nowhere near the conduct that causes a failure to maintain F-1 [student visa] status,” they wrote, noting that federal law indicates that status may be revoked for “crimes of violence” of more than one year’s imprisonment.
In an affidavit to the court, Jin wrote that he worried an interruption in his status would have lasting consequences. “This will make me ineligible to ever become a permanent resident,” he wrote. “It will prevent me from securing optional [practical] training and securing employment in the United States.”
He feared he would lose nearly six years of efforts of schooling in the United States unless the court intervened, he wrote. He worried he would not be able to complete his classes this semester or register for classes next semester.
“All of this is making me put my entire life on hold — because of a speeding ticket,” he wrote.
Schiltz found that Jin was likely to prevail on the merits in the case and questioned the basis for the government’s termination of Jin’s status.
“The only apparent basis for defendants’ action is plaintiff’s history of minor traffic violations,” he wrote. Enabling Jin to remain his legal student status and continue his studies while the case proceeds in court “poses no plausible risk of injury to defendants.”
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan issued a similar order in the case of Rattanand Ratsantiboon, a nursing student at Metropolitan State University from Thailand. Ratsantiboon’s legal status was also terminated after being flagged in a criminal records check.
In his order, Schiltz drew on similar legal logic as Bryan. Terminating the status for an international student would require either revoking a waiver issued on that person’s behalf, the introduction of a Congressional bill to confer permanent resident status on that individual, or a notification in the Federal Register for public safety reasons.
“Defendants do not appear to have terminated plaintiff’s status pursuant to any of these three courses of action,” Schiltz wrote. “The Court finds that there is a substantial public interest in ensuring that government agencies comply with federal law. Indeed, the Court cannot imagine how the public interest might be served by permitting federal officials to flaunt the very laws that they have sworn to enforce.”
While Ratsantiboon and Jin have won temporary relief, Wilson, who is representing both, said some other students whose status was terminated by the federal government have already left the country.
“If the intention was to get even one person to leave, well, then they succeeded,” Wilson said. “I think that they’re probably a little surprised by how quickly people have mobilized to push back.”
The issues in this case are not limited to students, Wilson said. These terminations raise due process considerations about whether people have the right to know what is happening to them and present their side of the issue before the government takes action.
“That’s just a fundamental concept that we take for granted that seems to be disappearing,” Wilson said. “If it disappears in this context, it can disappear in other contexts too.”
Schiltz ordered ICE to reinstate Jin’s status retroactive to April 8. He scheduled a hearing for April 24 to determine whether to convert the temporary restraining into a preliminary injunction.
