Latest news with #MuzaffarChishti
The Guardian
01-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Trump seizes on ‘moral character' loophole as way to revoke citizenship
A justice department memo directing the department's civil division to target the denaturalization of US citizens around the country has opened up an new avenue for Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda, experts say. In the US, when a person is denaturalized, they return to the status they held before becoming a citizen. If someone was previously a permanent resident, for example, they will be classified as such again, which can open the door to deportation efforts. The memo, published on 11 June, instructed the justice department's civil division to 'prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence'. Immigration matters are civil matters, meaning that immigrants – whether they are naturalized citizens or not – do not have the right to an attorney in such cases. Muzaffar Chishti from the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan thinktank, explained that much of immigration law was based on discretion by government officials. To revoke a person's citizenship, US officials must demonstrate that they are not of 'good moral character' – a subjective and broad term with little defined parameters. Now, the recent memo lists a broad range of categories of people who should be stripped of their naturalized citizenship status, providing further guidance as to who is not of good 'moral character'. This included 'those with a nexus to terrorism' and espionage, war criminals and those who were found to have lied in their naturalization process. Officials still need to prove their case, Chisthi explained. '[The administration] can't, on their own, denaturalize people, they still have to go to a federal district court,' said Chisthi. 'Denaturalization finally does belong to federal district courts – but they are obviously keen on finding every way they can to denaturalize people they think did not deserve to be naturalized.' However, the justice department's memo is not solely confined to those expanded categories. It gives more discretion to officials to pursue these cases, prompting a fear for analysts and attorneys that the directive by the Trump administration is overly broad. For Jorge Loweree, director of policy for the American Immigration Council, a new category in the memo stood out to him: individuals accused of being gang and cartel members. Loweree is concerned 'because of the way that the administration has treated people that it deems to be gang members', he said. ' It wasn't that long ago that the administration flew hundreds of people from the US to a prison in El Salvador on, in most instances, flimsy evidence.' Although the memo marks an escalation by the Trump administration it is not entirely news, and in recent decades, other nations have also engaged in seeking to strip citizenship from certain people. Denaturalization in the US has a long history. Throughout the 20th century, those seen by the US government as potential enemies to US interests were stripped of their citizenship. Journalists, activists and labor leaders, accused of being anarchists and communists, were frequently targeted. Politically driven denaturalization fell off in the late 1960s, when the US supreme court ruled that denaturalization could only take place if someone was found to have committed fraud or 'willful misrepresentation', as USA Today explained earlier this year, leading to a lull in denaturalization cases. Denaturalization categories were narrowed, with cases focusing mostly on former war criminals, such as Nazis, who had lied in their documents to gain status in the US. In recent decades, starting under the Obama administration, the US government escalated its denaturalization efforts. Matthew Hoppock, an immigration attorney based in Kansas who follows and analyzes immigration policies closely, said that the Obama-era enforcement efforts were limited to specific cases. The operation, called Operation Janus, began reviewing fingerprint cards to determine whether naturalized citizens had lied during their citizenship process. Through 2017, Hoppock, who accessed denaturalization data, found 'it's about 10 to 15 cases a year that they bring nationwide,' adding that 'those were typically human rights abusers, Nazi guards, and cases like that.' The first Trump administration marked a significant uptick in denaturalization efforts. The Department of Homeland Security at the time stood on the shoulders of the Obama-era operation, supercharging it to strip citizenship from people accused of cheating in the process of applying for citizenship as a foreign-born individual. The administration's goal at the time was to examine 700,000 files but, as Hoppock states, due to the high cost and time-consuming nature of the cases, the administration barely made a dent. But as Chisthi further explains, much about the first Trump administration's anti-immigration agenda was only a 'dress rehearsal' for policies being pursued this year. Now, under the second Trump administration, denaturalizing people has risen up the priority list. Meanwhile, the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11, 2001 radically changed how many countries dealt with national security efforts and other countries also began to explore the denaturalization of certain people. According to research from the analysis organization Global Citizenship Observatory, or Globalcit, based in Italy, and the Institute of Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI), based in the Netherlands, between 2000 and 2020, citizenship revocation expanded dramatically in some countries, especially in Europe, and especially for minority groups. During this period, 18 countries in Europe, researchers found, expanded their denaturalization powers in the name of national security and counter-terrorism. A report from the European University Institute's Global Citizenship Observatory, published this year, highlighted certain countries with broad and ambiguous denaturalization laws. In Bulgaria, for example, a person's citizenship could be stripped for 'serious crimes against the country.' And in Vietnam, acts that 'harm the country's prestige' are also grounds for revocation. There have been recent shifts in certain countries, related to denaturalization cases. In Latvia, citizenship can be revoked if the person serves in the security or armed forces of another country. However, in 2022, amid the war caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, an exception was introduced to allow Latvians to fight for Ukraine. Just this year, the report says, the Swedish government recommended a constitutional shift that could revoke a person's citizenship due to 'threatening national security'. In Germany, some political parties discussed the push to revoke citizenship for 'supporters of terrorism, antisemites, and extremists'. And Hungary introduced a constitutional amendment to allow the temporary suspension of citizenship on 'security grounds'. As the European University Institute's report highlighted, last year, Kuwait introduced amendments that would revoke citizenship of people who were involved in fraudulent conduct, crimes involving 'moral turpitude' or where the state's interests are deemed at risk. more than 42,000 people reportedly lost their citizenship, the report says. 'We've seen dictators use the taking-away-of-citizenship as a way to control a population or bend people to their will,' Hoppock said. 'I don't know if the Trump administration is going to use it this way. This memo is pretty milquetoast – it just says we don't really have any priorities any more.' But, Hoppock added, the new memo is a huge departure from past efforts. 'Unfortunately it could be abused by a system that likes to go after its adversaries,' he said. All experts told the Guardian that resources will be a major factor in the Trump administration's push to revoke some people's citizenship. Already, the federal government's resources are stretched thin, for a variety of reasons. 'The most important thing is: how much resources is the administration going to put into it, to target prosecutions?' Chisthi asks. 'And that will determine whether this will mostly be an exercise in getting a lot of people anxious or actually producing outcomes of denaturalizations.' Loweree is wary. 'Resource constraints would be a significant limiting factor in this type of thing,' he said. 'But we have seen the administration do anything and everything it can to pursue its immigration agenda, in all instances,' he said.
The Guardian
01-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Trump seizes on ‘moral character' loophole as way to revoke citizenship
A justice department memo directing the department's civil division to target the denaturalization of US citizens around the country has opened up an new avenue for Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda, experts say. In the US, when a person is denaturalized, they return to the status they held before becoming a citizen. If someone was previously a permanent resident, for example, they will be classified as such again, which can open the door to deportation efforts. The memo, published on 11 June, instructed the justice department's civil division to 'prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence'. Immigration matters are civil matters, meaning that immigrants – whether they are naturalized citizens or not – do not have the right to an attorney in such cases. Muzaffar Chishti from the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan thinktank, explained that much of immigration law is based on discretion by government officials. To revoke a person's citizenship, US officials must demonstrate that they are not of 'good moral character' – a subjective and broad term with little defined parameters. Now, the recent memo lists a broad range of categories of people who should be stripped of their naturalized citizenship status, providing further guidance as to who is not of good 'moral character'. This includes 'those with a nexus to terrorism' and espionage, war criminals and those who were found to have lied in their naturalization process. Officials still need to prove their case, Chisthi explains. '[The administration] can't, on their own, denaturalize people, they still have to go to a federal district court,' said Chisthi. 'Denaturalization finally does belong to federal district courts – but they are obviously keen on finding every way they can to denaturalize people they think did not deserve to be naturalized.' However, the justice department's memo is not solely confined to those expanded categories. It gives more discretion to officials to pursue these cases, prompting a fear for analysts and attorneys that the directive by the Trump administration is overly broad. For Jorge Loweree, director of policy for the American Immigration Council, a new category in the memo stood out to him: individuals accused of being gang and cartel members. Loweree is concerned 'because of the way that the administration has treated people that it deems to be gang members', he said. ' It wasn't that long ago that the administration flew hundreds of people from the US to a prison in El Salvador on, in most instances, flimsy evidence.' Although the memo marks an escalation by the Trump administration it is not entirely news, and in recent decades, other nations have also engaged in seeking to strip citizenship from certain people. Denaturalization in the US has a long history. Throughout the 20th century, those seen by the US government as potential enemies to US interests were stripped of their US citizenship. Journalists, activists and labor leaders, accused of being anarchists and communists, were frequently targeted. Politically-driven denaturalization fell off in the late 1960s, when the US supreme court ruled that denaturalization could only take place if someone was found to have committed fraud or 'willful misrepresentation', as USA Today explained earlier this year, leading to a lull in denaturalization cases. Denaturalization categories were narrowed, with cases focusing mostly on former war criminals, such as Nazis, who had lied in their documents to gain status in the US. In recent decades, starting under the Obama administration, the US government escalated its denaturalization efforts. Matthew Hoppock, an immigration attorney based in Kansas who follows and analyzes immigration policies closely, said that the Obama-era enforcement efforts were limited to specific cases. The operation, called Operation Janus, began reviewing fingerprint cards to determine whether naturalized citizens had lied during their citizenship process. Through 2017, Hoppock, who accessed denaturalization data, found 'it's about 10 to 15 cases a year that they bring nationwide,' adding that 'those were typically human rights abusers, Nazi guards, and cases like that.' The first Trump administration marked a significant uptick in denaturalization efforts. The Department of Homeland Security at the time stood on the shoulders of the Obama-era operation, supercharging it to strip citizenship from people accused of cheating in the process of applying for citizenship as a foreign-born individual. The administration's goal at the time was to examine 700,000 files but, as Hoppock states, due to the high cost and time-consuming nature of the cases, the administration barely made a dent. But as Chisthi further explains, much about the first Trump administration's anti-immigration agenda was only a 'dress rehearsal' for policies being pursued this year. Now, under the second Trump administration, denaturalizing people has risen up the priority list. Meanwhile, the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11, 2001 radically changed how many countries dealt with national security efforts and other countries also began to explore the denaturalization of certain people. According to research from the analysis organization Global Citizenship Observatory, or Globalcit, based in Italy, and the Institute of Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI), based in the Netherlands, between 2000 and 2020, citizenship revocation expanded dramatically in some countries, especially in Europe, and especially for minority groups. During this period, 18 countries in Europe, researchers found, expanded their denaturalization powers in the name of national security and counter-terrorism. A report from the European University Institute's Global Citizenship Observatory, published this year, highlighted certain countries with broad and ambiguous denaturalization laws. In Bulgaria, for example, a person's citizenship could be stripped for 'serious crimes against the country.' And in Vietnam, acts that 'harm the country's prestige' are also grounds for revocation. There have been recent shifts in certain countries, related to denaturalization cases. In Latvia, citizenship can be revoked if the person serves in the security or armed forces of another country. However, in 2022, amid the war caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, an exception was introduced to allow Latvians to fight for Ukraine. Just this year, the report says, the Swedish government recommended a constitutional shift that could revoke a person's citizenship due to 'threatening national security.' In Germany, some political parties discussed the push to revoke citizenship for 'supporters of terrorism, antisemites, and extremists.' And Hungary introduced a constitutional amendment to allow the temporary suspension of citizenship on 'security grounds.' As the European University Institute's report highlighted, last year, Kuwait introduced amendments that would revoke citizenship of people who were involved in fraudulent conduct, crimes involving 'moral turpitude' or where the state's interests are deemed at risk. Over 42,000 people reportedly lost their citizenship, the report says. 'We've seen dictators use the taking-away-of-citizenship as a way to control a population or bend people to their will,' Hoppock said. 'I don't know if the Trump administration is going to use it this way. This memo is pretty milquetoast – it just says we don't really have any priorities any more.' But, Hoppock added, the new memo is a huge departure from past efforts. 'Unfortunately it could be abused by a system that likes to go after its adversaries,' he said. All experts told the Guardian that resources will be a major factor in the Trump administration's push to revoke some people's citizenship. Already, the federal government's resources are stretched thin, for a variety of reasons. 'The most important thing is: How much resources is the administration going to put into it, to target prosecutions?' Chisthi asks. 'And that will determine whether this will mostly be an exercise in getting a lot of people anxious or actually producing outcomes of denaturalizations.' Loweree is wary. 'Resource constraints would be a significant limiting factor in this type of thing,' he said. 'But we have seen the administration do anything and everything it can to pursue its immigration agenda, in all instances,' he said.
Boston Globe
30-06-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
ICE is arresting migrants in worksite raids. Employers are largely escaping charges.
Charging company owners for employing undocumented workers has historically been rare because the government needs to demonstrate that the employer knew of the worker's illegal status. That is a high burden of proof, and investigations can take months. Neither Democratic nor Republican administrations have made worksite raids as much of a priority in the past. The Biden administration halted large-scale immigration arrests at worksites and focused enforcement on employers. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The raids immigration officers are conducting have largely targeted small businesses such as car washes. Some are carried out in a span of minutes. Two business owners said officers did not show a warrant, even when asked for one, raising questions about whether immigration agents are violating constitutional rights in their effort to drive up migrant arrests. Advertisement 'The difference about these raids of the last six weeks is that this is not principally an action against employers,' said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. 'This is principally an action in pursuit of mass deportations. When they could not produce the number of arrests that they had been hoping for, they suddenly said, 'Let's raid employers.' It was not, 'Let's penalize employers.'' Advertisement Though the recent raids in Los Angeles outside Home Depots and at a garment factory drew much attention, immigration authorities have conducted enforcement operations in states throughout the country. They arrested 33 workers at construction sites near Ocala, Florida, and 11 at Outlook Dairy Farms near Lovington, New Mexico. The first raid ICE publicized took place at Complete Autowash in Philadelphia eight days after President Donald Trump took office. Small businesses with limited resources are easier targets than deep-pocketed corporations, immigration experts say. That's because they're less willing to challenge government actions or stir up a public commotion. Though immigration officers need a judicial warrant to enter private areas within a business, they can go into any areas considered publicly accessible, such as the space where customers eat at a restaurant. Nonetheless, two business owners whose companies were raided said armed DHS agents had entered areas restricted from the public. In February, ICE agents arrived at an auto repair shop outside Philadelphia. They entered a private back office and arrested the entire staff of three workers, said the owner, who spoke on the condition that he and his business not be named because he fears retaliation from the government. One of the workers was deported to Guatemala and another remains in detention, he said. 'It's already hard enough to run a small business,' said the shop owner, an immigrant from Mexico. 'We've barely been open in recent months. This hurt a lot.' Advertisement The owner has faced no charges, fines or further contact from ICE since the raid, he said. But the local Latino community avoids his shop now, and he and his wife have lost sleep worrying whether the business can survive. He also worries that his rights were violated because of ICE's refusal to show a warrant. DHS did not respond to questions about how many workplace raids have led to charges against employers. In April, ICE announced it had arrested more than 1,000 workers who were in the country illegally during Trump's first 100 days and proposed more than $1 million in fines 'against businesses that exploit and hire illegal workers.' A Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement that 'under President Trump and Attorney General Bondi's leadership, the Department of Justice will enforce federal immigration laws and hold bad actors accountable when they employ illegal aliens in violation of federal law.' 'An American business' On June 22, Customs and Border Protection agents in masks, sunglasses, and bulletproof vests pulled up in unmarked cars at Bubble Bath Hand Car Wash in Torrance, California, chasing workers into a car wash tunnel marked with 'employees & clients only' signs. Video shot by a bystander shows agents pushing one worker's head into a gate. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said he was trying to escape and was not injured. The car wash owner, Emmanuel Karim Nicola-Cruz, said his requests to see a warrant were repeatedly denied. Security video of the incident obtained by The Post shows an agent pushing him into the tunnel. 'They weren't answering any of my questions,' Nicola-Cruz said. 'I feel like my rights were 100 percent violated. I feel absolutely, absolutely betrayed. We have American flags all over the property. We're an American business.' Advertisement Seventy miles to the north, in Ventura County, Maureen McGuire, chief executive of the local Farm Bureau, said ICE agents swept through more than a dozen farms and packing houses last month. They arrested multiple workers but left after farmers requested to see proof of judicial warrants, she said. Those incidents and others have left some small-business owners convinced the worksite operations are aimed at increasing the administration's goal of arresting 3,000 migrants a day - rather than targeting public safety threats or investigating owners engaged in a criminal enterprise. In several raids, armed officers have been recorded moving in quickly, surrounding workers and questioning them about their immigration status. In other cases, they demand to see an ID. While workers do not have to comply unless agents present a warrant, many do, said Jennifer Martinez, a labor and employment attorney at the Hanson Bridgett law firm in California. 'People cooperate because they are scared,' she said. 'They worry things could get violent.' Several other tactics have alarmed immigrant and labor rights groups. ICE agents have been serving notices in person that officials are auditing whether a company's employees have permission to work in the United States. Although serving these notices does not give ICE the authority to search and enter private areas of a worksite, agents have intercepted workers attempting to flee after their arrival. The Trump administration has also asked courts for special warrants that allow immigration officers to enter and search businesses without identifying who they are looking for. These warrants, known as Blackie's warrants, allow immigration officials to seek out undocumented workers without having their names, a typical requirement for judge-issued search warrants. Advertisement Speaking about warrants more broadly, McLaughlin said it was 'not a new practice for ICE' to ask for one without naming specific workers. Blackie's warrants in particular have rarely been used under recent administrations, and some judges have found they fail to meet the requirements of the Fourth Amendment protecting individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures. 'ICE is trying to make an end run around the legal requirements that bind law enforcement, in line with the broader trend of abusing executive powers,' said Jessie Hahn, a senior attorney at the National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy nonprofit. Car washes and taco trucks On June 10, ICE conducted a worksite raid of Glenn Valley Foods, a meat production plant in Omaha, as part of an investigation into identity theft, according to a news release. The raid resulted in the arrest of more than 70 people working illegally. Chad Hartmann, president of Glenn Valley Foods, said in an interview that he was taken by surprise, especially because he said the business had an I-9 inspection this year and participated in E-Verify, an online service designed to help employers confirm work eligibility. Hartmann described hearing a 'loud knock' and said he was handed a federal search warrant as ICE agents entered. 'When they opened the door, you saw armed officials in bulletproof vests … everybody, they've got masks on,' he said. 'It was just shocking.' Hartmann said DHS later informed him that Glenn Valley Foods would not face charges or fines because it had followed the law. He noted that Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) described Glenn Valley Foods as a 'victim' but added that 'there's no winner in this.' Advertisement 'There's also the victim of the person that got their identity stolen and arguably there's a victim in the family members that are left to figure out how to make ends meet when the family member who is the breadwinner is not able to support them,' Hartmann said. 'There's tragedy all around.' ICE announced in March that John Washburn, general manager of San Diego Powder & Protective Coatings in El Cajon, was charged with 'conspiracy to harbor aliens' after employing undocumented workers. The Justice Department said this month that Washburn pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 'one year probation and 50 hours of community service.' The current Trump administration appears on track to exceed the number of worksite arrests made in the initial two years of his first term. The National Immigration Law Center estimated in a 2019 report that more than 1,800 workers had been arrested in worksite raids since 2017. Immigration advocates also note that Trump commuted the 27-year prison sentence of Sholom Rubashkin, the former chief executive of an Iowa meatpacking plant that was raided under President George W. Bush. (Rubashkin's immigration charges were dismissed, but he'd been convicted of financial fraud.) The administration has claimed it is going after the 'worst of the worst' and prioritizing the arrest and deportation of people who are a threat to public safety. But former ICE officials said raiding car washes and taco trucks is not an effective strategy for reaching that goal. 'This is the exact opposite,' said John Sandweg, acting ICE director under President Barack Obama. Under the second Trump administration's approach to worksite raids, 'you are much more likely to find non-criminals because professional criminals don't work at car washes, typically.'
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
ICE Invaded Child's Birthday Party Claiming It Was a Gang Meeting
In March, the Trump administration raided what they called a Tren de Arauga gang gathering in Texas, arresting dozens of people at 5 in the morning. Two months later, The Texas Tribune reports that none of the people they arrested had any gang ties or even criminal records, and that the 'Tren de Aragua gathering' they busted was in fact a birthday party. Forty-seven people were arrested in total, including nine children, although it's unclear if every person taken in was at the birthday party. The ICE agents and Texas police who raided the birthday party even went so far as to attack the families with flash grenades, scaring them and their children. 'We all started shouting that there were babies — 'Babies, there's babies,'' said one of the arrested men, who said he was celebrating the 5th birthday of his son and the 28th birthday of his best friend at a house they rented for the weekend. 'They were like bombs, like boom.' ICE also profiled one of the party attendees for his tattoos, based on a thoroughly debunked theory that Tren de Aragua members have specific ink. 'They told me to my face: 'You know what those stars mean? Those stars are styled by gangsters in your country,'' he told the Tribune. 'I said, no. I got these stars when — no kidding — I was starting to leave adolescence, started working. I got them because I liked them and I wanted to get them.' While ICE has refused to name the detained Venezuelans, the Tribune identified 35 of them. Some were in ICE detention for weeks and were released with ankle monitors. One of the children was even kicked out of school due to missing too many days in detainment. Again, none were charged criminally. 'This is about something much bigger. If it happens to a person who is accused of being a (gang member) today, tomorrow it could happen to you and me,' said Migration Policy Institute director Muzaffar Chishti. 'And if the alleged member of this gang does not have the right to contest [charges against them], how can you know I'll have it? The next person will have it?' ICE has been putting innocent people through hellish, traumatic arrest events for months now, as Trump, border czar Tom Homan, and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller march blindly ahead with trying to deport as many people as they possibly can, truth be damned.
Axios
29-04-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Trump's 100 days: Inside Massachusetts-led fights in the courts
President Trump's first 100 days are a case study in how a flood of executive actions meant to remake a nation can slow to a trickle in the courts. Depending on where you stand, you can partly thank (or blame) Massachusetts residents and their attorneys. The big picture: Federal courts are wading through hundreds of lawsuits challenging Trump's various executive orders. Questions about alleged constitutional violations — including civil rights violations against members of marginalized groups — have created a bottleneck for the administration's efforts to swiftly shrink and overhaul the government, legal experts say. The latest: Trump plans to mark his 100 days in office with an executive order identifying "sanctuary cities" — which would probably include the Boston area — and another order that would "strengthen and unleash law enforcement to pursue criminals," the Guardian reported. Reality check: If previous lawsuits are any indication, Massachusetts officials and attorneys will probably challenge those orders in court. That doesn't mean Trump's challengers will prevail, but it may stem the flow of his agenda, legal experts say. By the numbers: Trump filed more than 139 executive orders in his first 100 days, more than any other president. Those orders have been met with hundreds of lawsuits — more than 50 class-action or group lawsuits challenging the orders and related policies on immigration alone. 👶🏽 Birthright citizenship: The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in May related to a lawsuit challenging Trump's executive order to end birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children of noncitizen parents and undocumented immigrants. Court rulings have blocked the order, but Trump attorneys want the Supreme Court to let it proceed and apply to everyone except individuals named in the lawsuits and living in states challenging the order, like Massachusetts. It's already rare for the nation's highest court to take up a fast-moving case, based on an emergency petition, especially after oral arguments typically end in April, says Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. 🛩️ Passport policy: A lawsuit over the feds' denial of X-marked passports has led to a victory for six nonbinary and transgender plaintiffs, but not for all transgender travelers. Judge Julia Kobick in Boston ordered the government to issue X-marked passports to six plaintiffs, including three from Massachusetts. She declined to order the government to delay implementing its new passport policy, but the reason lies in the legal mechanisms used to request those changes, not necessarily on the merits of the passport policy. 🎓 Student visas: A wave of student visa revocations nationwide was met with dozens of lawsuits alleging the students' due process rights were violated. The government has since restored some student visa statuses temporarily, including that of an MIT senior represented by Kerry Doyle. (A renowned Boston-area immigration attorney, Doyle was appointed an immigration judge under former President Biden — and recently fired by Trump.) Yes, but: The government's hasn't reversed course in its efforts to deport international students who expressed pro-Palestinian sentiments.
