CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Harvard University students and Cambridge residents breathed a sigh of relief Friday after the federal government announced they’d be reinstating the visas of roughly 12,000 students nationwide.
Students across the country sought legal action in light of their status changes, putting heat on the federal government.
Nicole Micheroni, an immigration attorney at Mass Immigration Law, has been swamped over the last month working with several international students.
“I think it’s a big win for students and universities today,” she told Boston 25 Friday. “People have been overwhelmed and kind of at a loss as what to do next... A lot of them were a few weeks from graduation when this happened, and it upended their life plans.”
Students from MIT, Northeastern, Harvard, and beyond had their visas revoked without explanation, the schools say.
But Micheroni believes the students were targeted for minor issues.
She explained, “It sounds like there were a lot of people that had a visa complication in the past. Some people had minor interactions with the criminal justice system. That could be traffic violations. I did hear of some OUI’s. I did hear of a woman who was mistakenly held for about 10 minutes when she was the victims of domestic violence. But, it can be any type of interaction.”
Students at Harvard, like junior Henry Moss, called the status changes for international students “absolutely insane.”
He continued, “These are like our peers. It’s not just some abstract monetary threat.”
Cambridge resident Beth Britz has also watched the drama from the outside.
“I’m proud of Harvard, though, for standing up,” she said. “It made no sense.”
Micheroni told Boston 25 that this change does not impact the Rumeysa Ozturk case, the Tufts University graduate student who’s visa was revoked. In this case, Micheroni said the federal government cited why they were detaining her. For more than 12,000 international students across the country, no explanation was given according to the schools.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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