Due Process in Question: The Right Violations Behind SEVIS System and F-1 Visa Revocations
Starting in March 2025, the U.S. government has increasingly revoked F-1 non-immigrant student visas. Reports from May 2025 show that the State Department has already taken away more than 1,600 student visas, alongside the Student and Exchange Visitor Information Systems (SEVIS) records for over 4,700 international students being terminated. The policy changes have impacted students from over 40 countries, with the most affected students being from India, China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria, reflecting the broader demographics of international students in the United States.
Some of these terminations have occurred without prior notice or clear justification, often citing vague or minor issues such as dismissed misdemeanor charges or participation in non-criminal protest activities. For example, a Ph.D. student at Dartmouth with no criminal convictions and a perfect GPA had his SEVIS record terminated without prior notice or explanation. Rather, the termination was categorized under the broad designation of “Otherwise Failing to Maintain Status” and provides the student no opportunity for a hearing or to rectify any errors. A Turkish graduate student at the University of Minnesota, Doğukan Günaydın, was arrested after his visa revocation went unnoticed. He then remained in custody for eight weeks. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Gunaydin posed a public safety and national security threat due to a driving while intoxicated conviction in 2023. However, Gunaydin already fulfilled all of his probation conditions and evidently posed no real threat to public safety based on the evidence brought by DHS. These abrupt terminations have triggered immediate consequences for both students and universities, including losing employment authorization, becoming ineligible for reentry into the U.S., and even the risk of deportation. All of this leads to widespread concern and uncertainty among student visa holders. The broad powers granted to the government by the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to oversee F-1 visas leave students in a vulnerable position.
According to INA 101 (a)(15)(F), F-1 is legally categorized as a non-immigrant visa granted to students who enroll in Government-approved academic institutions and engage in a full course of study. Once admitted to the United States on an F-1 visa, an international student is allowed to stay for the duration of their status, provided they continue to meet certain requirements such as enrolling in a full course of study and refraining from unauthorized employment. These requirements are outlined under INA §214, which governs the admission of nonimmigrants. The statute sets the conditions for maintaining status and grants the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the authority to establish and enforce regulations for F-1 students. Designated School Officials (DSOs) at academic institutions are required to report to the DHS through the SEVIS system when a student fails to maintain their status, as outlined in the Code of Federal Regulations.
SEVIS, the web-based system used by DHS to manage information on schools certified by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), stores personal, academic, immigration, and visa-related data to monitor and ensure compliance with student visa requirements. Unlike other statutory provisions established by the INA, SEVIS was created by DHS itself, effectively granting the agency broad discretion and centralized control over the oversight, enforcement, and termination of international student records. As a result, DHS’s centralized control and broad administrative authority over student records enable it to revoke status or initiate terminations without adequate procedural safeguards. These abrupt, opaque, and potentially unconstitutional actions place international students in an especially vulnerable position.
On March 25, 2025, a fifth-year doctoral student at Tufts University, Rumeysa Ozturk, was arrested by six masked federal officials on the street in Somerville, MA. She was detained for six weeks in a Louisiana facility before her release. According to Homeland Security Investigation Agent Patrick Cunningham, the DHS leadership had already revoked her F-1 visa prior to her arrest––but Ozturk was never notified of the revocation, nor given a chance to contest it, a practice described as “silent revocation”.
This treatment raises serious constitutional concerns, particularly under the Fifth Amendment, which states that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Under this clause, federal agencies are required to provide individuals with procedural safeguards before depriving them of protected interests such as liberty or immigration status. In the case of Ozturk, Günaydın, and countless other visa holders, people are arrested without warning and detained immediately, with no opportunity to present evidence, receive a hearing, or challenge the visa revocation: a clear violation of due process. Due process protection would have required DHS to provide advance notice, a clear explanation for the termination, and an opportunity for Ozturk to respond, none of which occurred.
Ozturk’s arrest was reportedly based on an opinion article she co-authored in her campus newspaper criticizing Israel’s war. DHS labeled her actions as antisemitism and accused her of “engaging in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organisation that relishes the killing of Americans.” However, these claims were never tested in a legal setting. Her attorney, Mahsa Khanbabai, argues that the case was a clear act of retaliation targeting protected speech, stating that “the silent revocation is a manipulation of our immigration laws to target those who exercise their constitutional rights…this has never been about immigration enforcement and has always been about retaliation and punishment on protected speech”. Given that the government’s case relied solely on her published opinion, Judge William Sessions, the federal judge presiding over Ozturk’s case, stated in his court order that the situation “raises very significant due process [and freedom of speech] concerns and chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens.”
The recent wave of F-1 visa revocations reveals erosion of constitutional protections for international students in the United States. Cases like Rumeysa Ozturk reveal a pattern of abrupt enforcement actions taken without notice, explanation, or opportunity to respond, undermining the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Many of these actions are based on vague or non-criminal grounds, threatening not only the legal safeguards afforded to noncitizens but also their right to free expression. Expedited removal, a policy established by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), authorizes DHS officials to quickly deport an individual without holding a hearing before an immigration judge or allowing review by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), thereby subjecting those placed in expedited removal to reduced due process protections. From August 2004 to July 2019, the DHS only enforced expedited removal to undocumented individuals found within 100 air miles of a U.S. land border who could not prove continuous presence for at least 14 days before apprehension. However, under the Trump Administration in 2019, the DHS removed geographic and time limits, expanding its expedited removal authority to individuals who entered without inspection and could not show two years of continuous presence. The Biden administration rescinded the 2019 expansion, restoring the pre-2019 limits, but the DHS reinstated the full nationwide expansion to the maximum extent allowed by the INA, again applying it to anyone unable to prove two years of continuous presence, regardless of location.
Central to this issue is SEVIS itself. While originally designed for administrative efficiency and national security, SEVIS effectively grants DHS unchecked authority, including the power to revoke visa status without notifying students or offering any explanation. This discretion enables “silent” terminations that bypass the procedural protections typically required under the Constitution, leaving students with no opportunity to contest or even understand the actions taken against them. Rather than operating as a neutral administrative tool, SEVIS has become an opaque and bureaucratic mechanism of enforcement, placing thousands of students in a precarious position. Ultimately, this unchecked power calls into question the legality and transparency of our current non-immigrant visa systems and the broader immigration enforcement practices of the federal government.
Edited by Gabi Fabozzi