Pasula v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security – Student Visa Terminations

The ACLU filed a federal class action lawsuit on behalf of more than 100 students whose F-1 student immigration statuses were unlawfully terminated. We asked the court to reinstate their F-1 student status so they could continue their studies.

In August 2025, this case was settled, and we asked the court to dismiss the case. The government agreed to restore the F-1 student status of the students we represented.

On April 18, 2025, four ACLU affiliates and law firm Shaheen & Gordon filed a federal class action lawsuit seeking to represent over 100 students in New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico who had their F-1 student immigration status unlawfully and abruptly terminated with no specified reason as to why. The lawsuit asked the court to reinstate their F-1 student status to allow them to continue their studies.

This lawsuit challenged the Trump administration’s sudden termination of student statuses at universities without any notice or stated explanation. International students are a vital community in our state’s universities, and no administration should be allowed to circumvent the law to unilaterally strip students of status, disrupt their studies, and put them at risk of deportation.

According to the lawsuit, the unilateral and unlawful terminations severely disrupted the educational opportunities of these students who were in the middle of their studies (and in the middle of a semester) and who were simply trying to obtain, often at considerable expense, an education in the United States while following all the rules required of them. With terminated F-1 statuses, they were also at dire risk of detention and deportation.

These terminations by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had been occurring since at least March 1, 2025, and had impacted hundreds, if not thousands, of international students throughout the United States. Inside Higher Ed estimates that, as of April 17, 2025, over 210 colleges and universities had identified 1,400-plus international students and recent graduates whose legal status had changed. As of April 11, 2025, this included 112 across New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico.

The lawsuit detailed how the unlawful termination of these students’ F-1 status violated their due process rights, as the government is required to provide advance notice and a meaningful opportunity to respond. Additionally, the lawsuit stated that the government is required to have grounds in order to terminate a student status, and that the revocation of an F-1 visa is not sufficient grounds to terminate student status.

To terminate student status, the student, for example, must fail to take full courses of study, engage in unauthorized employment, or be convicted of a violent crime with a potential sentence of more than a year. For those who would have been represented in the case, none of those situations existed.