Mass. schools scramble for details after ICE begins restoring international students to database

College administrators across Massachusetts scrambled to learn more after attorneys for the Trump administration said Friday the government will reverse course and restore legal status for thousands of international students studying in the U.S.

Following the announcements, student names started to reappear on the Student and Exchange Visitor Information Systems, or SEVIS, a database controlled by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency that allows students and schools to track immigration standings.

Many affected individuals said they were not notified when their legal status was revoked, and Friday’s reversal followed a similarly opaque process. ICE has not revealed which students would be restored in the system — or why. That’s left administrators, students and families poring over the database, refreshing for updates.

In Greater Boston, Harvard University confirmed six of 12 affected students had their records restored to the database. Three of nine Tufts University students also reappeared in the database, the school said.

Like many local colleges, a spokesperson from the University of Massachusetts system said the public universities did not have exact figures for how many students’ names were restored. Boston University confirmed some of its affected students were restored, too.

At Clark University in Worcester, some, but not all, affected students were placed back in the system on Friday afternoon, according to Dean and Associate Provost John LaBrie.

“While we are cautiously optimistic about the latest announcement from the federal government, we remain in a very fluid, unprecedented, and uncertain situation and we remain very concerned about our international students,” he said.

The haphazard restoration has left just as many questions as the sudden revocations, according to immigration attorney Kerry Doyle. She represents an anonymous MIT student who has sued to have her status restored to the database.

Doyle confirmed that her client was one of the names that reappeared in the system on Friday, but said it’s not clear if the removal will leave any lasting damage for students like her client.

“We want to ensure that having had their student records terminated out of the system will not have any long-term effect on these students because there could be very significant impacts on them if they’re seen to have been out of status at any point in their international student careers,” she said.

According to Doyle, government attorneys in court on Friday gave little detail other than to say the student records in the database would be restored, and that ICE is working on a policy to govern records removals in the future.

“ But what does that mean exactly? What is that gonna look like? What is the policy actually gonna say?” she asked. “You know, we welcome the change, but we can trust, but we want to verify that … these kids are not going to have a black mark in their records moving forward.”

___

Editor’s Note: Boston University owns WBUR’s broadcast license. WBUR is editorially independent.