SALT LAKE CITY — Eight international students attending school at Utah universities and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, challenging deportation orders.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court here in Salt Lake City on Friday, accuses the Trump administration of violating their Fifth Amendment rights by not affording them the ability to contest the decision to revoke their student visas. It asks a federal judge to allow them to continue their studies by reinstating them in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVIS) registry.
The students filed under "John Doe" and "Jane Doe" pseudonyms in the lawsuit (the court filing itself is heavily redacted), and the ACLU of Utah said it is seeking a restraining order "to provide immediate protection to the students."
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"The government has arbitrarily, without any good or valid reason, terminated their SEVIS registrations without providing them any avenue to seek review or procedural due process other than this lawsuit. I have yet to see one of these machine-generated terminations that had a valid basis in fact or law," said Adam Crayk, a lawyer at the firm Stowell Crayk, who is representing some of the students with the ACLU, said in a statement.
Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, one of the plaintiffs, BYU student Suguru Onda, learned his visa had been restored. Onda's attorney, Adam Crayk, said the school was informed that the visa was restored 34 minutes after the lawsuit was filed.
Read the lawsuit here:
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