International students targeted by ICE for intimidation and persecution have not been playing along. Instead, many have been filing lawsuits to challenge the cancellation of student visas and termination of legal status. As a direct result of these lawsuits and of students, community members, and allies using every legal and institutional tool they had to push back, ICE has announced that it will restore SEVIS database access for over 1,200 international students whose records were removed. This is not the same as restoring student visas, but it’s a start.

The crackdowns against international students have caused many to lose jobs, drop out of school, flee the country and experience harm that can hardly be reversed by this backtracking by ICE. We will be among the many people monitoring this story and working to hold ICE accountable.

Much of the mainstream debate around targeting international students is centering questions about whether there is cause (that is, whether these students have committed “crimes,” here meaning participation in protests against the genocide in Palestine) and whether the targeted students have been afforded due process. Yet, we know that these attacks are motivated by the interests of U.S. [neo]imperialism and by anti-immigrant and anti-Palestinian hate, full stop. We stand against the criminalization of all international students, full stop.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action. Emphasis original.)