The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Connecticut (ACLU) is suing the federal government for unlawfully terminating the student status records of four international students who are studying in Connecticut.
The ACLU says the actions by the Trump administration now put their student visas in jeopardy.
The complaint, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court in New Haven, states the Department of Homeland Security terminated their F-1 student statuses along with hundreds of students nationwide, without explanation.
Attorneys with the ACLU are now requesting the court order the government to reinstate their statuses with a temporary restraining order.
Elana Bildner, Senior Staff Attorney for the ACLU Foundation of Connecticut, is representing the students. Bildner says she’s eyeing a separate federal lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
That nationwide case involves over 100 current and former international students, four of whom attend universities in Connecticut. Bildner is optimistic about their chances to force the government to reverse course.
“Overwhelmingly judges, I think, have been equally outraged by this obvious lack of due process and the fact that the government has not followed any of its procedures or done anything according to the law” Bildner said. “And so there has been a lot of success in these lawsuits.”
They have also claimed their statuses were unlawfully revoked but were able to win a temporary restraining order by the federal government, requiring it to reinstate their statuses for two weeks. The students are soon expecting a decision on if they’re allowed to maintain their statuses for the duration of the lawsuit.
The students have been named in the most recent lawsuit involving Connecticut international students.
They are: Yan Du, Elika Shams, Mengni He and Stephen Azu. More than 50 international students have had their statuses impacted throughout the state.
Unlike the federal lawsuit filed in Georgia, the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of Connecticut names her clients, due to uncertainty over being allowed to file anonymously in that specific court, according to Bildner.
Yan Du, who is a Chinese citizen, is in her sixth year as a PhD student studying Chemical and Environmental Engineering at Yale University, according to the complaint.
Du found out her status under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, (SEVIS) , a federal database of international students studying in the United States, was terminated on April 4. The complaint states Yale mistakenly revoked her status in 2022 but was reinstated and states her F-1 status was revoked this year due to failing to otherwise maintain status.
Elika Shams, an Iranian citizen, is in her second year of pursuing a Biomedical Engineering PhD at the University of Connecticut. According to the complaint, Shams was never arrested but attempted to open the gateway door at an airport while agreeing to pay a fee, after questioning it, leading to a warning from the Transportation and Safety Administration in 2024. (TSA) She found out she lost her status on April 10.
Mengni He, a Chinese citizen , is studying for a PhD in Experimental Pathology at Yale University, according to the complaint. He was charged with a driving violation back in 2016. She ended up paying a fine, and traveling to China during that time, when she lost her visa status but was able to reinstate it shortly after. She was able to freely travel from that point on until April 9 when she was told by Yale her SEVIS status had been revoked due to a criminal record check and her previous loss of her visa status.
Stephen Azu, a citizen of Ghana, is currently admitted to begin studying for a PhD in statistics at UCONN. Azu has had several driving violations, but was never convicted of a crime. He was told on April 9 his status had been terminated due to a criminal records check. He had to stop working as an analyst at UCONN as a result of his status being revoked according to the complaint. He was also freely able to travel until earlier this month.
Bildner says her clients are assets to their universities.
“They're doing really impressive scientific medical research, financial research, trying to work towards obtaining very impressive academic credentials,” she said.
