A U.S. District Court judge restored the legal status of an Indian student and strongly criticized Donald Trump’s administration. The court stated that ICE acted unlawfully in canceling her status, as well as the status of thousands of international students last year, as reported by Law & Crime.
On Wednesday, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan issued the ruling in the case of Mansi Reddy Bushireddy.
The “Student Criminal Alien Initiative,” labeled by Politico as “a rushed project by immigration officials,” was launched in 2025. After an executive order was issued to curb anti-Semitism, DHS started checking student records.
Officials ran the records against the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database. This led to about 5,500 students losing their status in just four months. The number was far higher than the six cases in 2024, as reported by Tampa Free Press.
Under F1 immigration policies, foreign students are required to meet three criteria: Maintain full-time coursework or related research; Refrain from outside employment; Commit no *violent felonies.*
The last part is key, misdemeanors and dismissed charges aren’t enough, yet…
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) April 25, 2025
Bushireddy’s name also appeared in the database. She was later notified that her F-1 student status was revoked due to a “criminal record.” However, the record was of a misdemeanor shoplifting charge, which was already dismissed. She had also completed community service for that.
Even though her records showed the dismissal, ICE still removed her from SEVIS. This essentially made it unlawful for her to stay or work in the country.
Following this, Bushireddy filed a lawsuit against the federal government on April 11, 2025. She then won a temporary court order, issued by Sooknanan.
But since then, ICE has made efforts to rectify its SEVIS-ending scheme, as pointed out by Law & Crime.
Sooknanan wrote in her 20-page memorandum opinion, “ICE has since returned Ms. Bushireddy’s SEVIS record to active status. It has promulgated a new internal policy regarding termination of SEVIS records. And it has represented that it has no plans to re-terminate Ms. Bushireddy’s record based on the dismissed shoplifting charge that prompted its earlier termination.
She added, “In light of these actions, the Government asserts that this lawsuit is now moot because there is no additional relief that this Court can award.”
However, neither Sooknanan nor Bushireddy believes this solves anything.
Sooknanan highlighted that ICE “offers no guarantee that it would not terminate her record in [the] future for some other comparable event that is similarly untethered to the appropriate statutory and regulatory bases for termination.”
NEW: Trump admin officials revealed today how ICE’s “student criminal alien initiative” led to targeting of 1000s of law-abiding foreign students — sparking a nationwide court backlash and, eventually, a complete reversal
Details w @joshgerstein https://t.co/9sc3WItulx
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) April 30, 2025
The opinion elaborated on the long-term consequences: “ICE acknowledges that while it has reset Ms. Bushireddy’s SEVIS designation to ‘active,’ her record will continue to reflect her ‘prior termination’ and subsequent ‘restoration.’ This is because ‘the event history for a given record cannot be deleted from the system.’”
In a footnote, the court also noted all the other students who had to go through a similar situation.
“The Court is outraged by the series of events that unfolded that led to the revocation of thousands of student visas. ICE referred lists to the State Department with a nudge that it review those students’ active F-1 visas. The State Department then revoked visas for thousands of those students, a decision that is unreviewable by any court,” the footnote read, as reported by Law & Crime.
