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‘I would not have left': An Indian student went home after the US terminated his status. Now he can't come back.
'A lot of people got scared,' said the student, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.
Some foreign students made the wrenching decision to drop everything and leave. The PhD student was among them. He bought a one-way ticket from Boston to Mumbai, and left April 5.
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What these students couldn't have known: The federal government would soon restore most international students' statuses in its Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS)
The problem, immigration lawyers said, is that the State Department did not automatically restore their visas, which allow international travel. With a revoked visa, anyone who leaves and tries to come back could be stopped by airport officers and barred from reentering the United States, or risk getting stuck abroad because of security delays.
Back in India, the PhD student applied for a new visa May 9, but got denied two weeks later. He has an 'active' status in the SEVIS database, 'as though the termination did not happen,' according to a notice sent by ICE in June and reviewed by the Globe. But without a valid visa he is physically locked out of the country.
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While the story of a PhD marooned in Mumbai may seem distant, it illustrates how compliance with the letter of the law doesn't always ensure protection. It also shows how difficult it is to bring people back once they've removed themselves from the country, said immigration lawyers.
'I did all the things right. I was compliant. They asked me to leave. I left the country,' said the PhD student. In doing so, 'I became a statistic to their self-deportation [initiative].'
If he had to do it all over again, he said, 'I would not have left.'
Lawyers said they generally advised students who had their statuses terminated this spring to stay in the United States, or made sure students at least knew their options.
'We know of cases where individuals did decide that 'I'm not going to fight,' for whatever reason,' said Boston-based attorney Elizabeth Goss.
It's hard to know how many students left, or where they ended up. A sizable number seem to hail from India, which
The State Department, in an email to the Globe, said that 'whenever an individual's visa is revoked, he or she may reapply at one of our consulates or embassies overseas at any time.'
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But some students have been denied authorization for reentry, and in late May, the US
The way Cambridge-based lawyer Stephanie Marzouk sees it, the Trump administration 'doesn't want foreign students here' and is 'pursuing this scorched-earth strategy of doing everything they can to dissuade people from coming to the US to study.'
The Indian PhD student, who didn't want to identify his school, applied for his visa before the United States suspended new interviews, but he was rejected under Immigration and Nationality Act's Section 214(b) because he didn't sufficiently demonstrate 'strong ties' to his native country that would compel him to return home.
He questioned why that concern was never flagged previously: 'I've done two visas before this [one], and I've presented my strong ties to them successfully.'
'My dad is a heart patient while my mother is a breast cancer patient,' he added. 'I'm not interested in leaving them.'
Soon after his rejection, he created a poll in his WhatsApp chat group of Indian students and found at least 14 others denied for the same reason.
Dahlia French, an immigration lawyer based in Texas, has met with around 11 students and heard of another 25 or so rejected on these grounds.
'Almost all are Indian,' she said.
Charles Kuck, a lawyer based in Atlanta, , said he's only heard of two students who have been approved for new visas since they returned home, 'but I've got at least 60 who have been denied' for 214(b), and 'they were all from India.'
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Reversing a visa denial is practically unheard of because of the judicial doctrine of
Kuck advised clients who left not to reapply for a visa. 'If the revocations were illegal, which we believe they were, then these students don't need to go back to the consulate; they can just come in on their current visas,' he said.
Simii, who asked to be identified by her first name only to protect her privacy, is a 30-year-old who graduated from Northeastern in 2022. The software engineer was in her third year of employment related to her field of study when she learned her SEVIS status was terminated and her visa revoked.
She returned to India, only to learn her SEVIS record had been reactivated. But with only a few months left before her student status runs out, she doubts the government will grant her another visa.
The PhD candidate had been studying neurodevelopmental disorders in his university lab in Boston when he found out ICE terminated his record. The reason he was given, he said, was
'otherwise failing to maintain status -- Individual identified in criminal records check and/or has had VISA revoked.'
Around five years ago, he was picked up in New York state for driving while ability impaired,
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'I was 21 at the time, and that was definitely a stupid mistake,' he said.
When he applied for a visa for his PhD program, he declared the prior DWAI conviction, then completed another round of medical and psychological evaluations before it was approved.
After his recent visa rejection, he's struggling to find a lawyer.
For these students, 'all that can be done is they can be better prepared to go back on a second consular interview,' and try to prove they do maintain strong ties to their country, said Kuck.
Simii, the Northeastern graduate, said she no longer sees the point in reapplying. Instead, she's traveling around India before looking for a job.
'I didn't leave because I gave up. I left because I refused to live in fear, uncertainty, and anxiety created by the immigration system,' she wrote in an email.
'I am sharing my story so that other students who feel scared, stuck, or ashamed because of a system that failed them can feel seen and heard.'
Globe correspondent Jade Lozada contributed to this report.
Brooke Hauser can be reached at
