International students at Marshall and West Virginia universities have had their legal statuses restored and are able to resume attending classes, according to letters from their schools.
Sajawal Ali Sohail, a 25-year-old computer science student at West Virginia University set to graduate in a couple of weeks, was fighting in federal court to remain in the United States after his digital record kept by federal officials to track international students was terminated.
And Shival Vyas, a Marshall University graduate student from India who is within just weeks of graduation, was in a separate federal lawsuit to try to remain in the country and earn his degree after he received an email saying his F-1 Visa was being revoked.
The students at West Virginia universities were among people who got a reprieve on Friday when the Trump administration reversed its moves that had wiped the online records of more than 1,500 international students. The electronic database portals that had been wiped included student visa status information.
Sohail of WVU had received notification that he would need to leave the country because he had been identified in a criminal records check. His attorneys said that he was briefly and wrongly arrested and then cleared of a fraud scheme where his family members were actually the victims.
Vyas of Marshall was arrested in Indiana in 2020 on a misdemeanor driving under the influence charge. He was sentenced to probation, which was lifted early. He also received notification that he would need to leave the country because of his identification in a criminal records check.
The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia had represented each student in their federal court cases.
“This is positive news not just for our two clients in West Virginia, but for international students across the country. We are continuing to monitor the situation closely, particularly the announcement that ICE will be developing new policies for revoking legal statuses,” stated ACLU of West Virginia.
“We want to be clear that the administration is backing down not because it’s the right thing to do, but because they have been dragged to court repeatedly and lost again and again.”