The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is re­vers­ing the ter­mi­na­tion of le­gal sta­tus for in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents around the U.S. af­ter many filed court chal­lenges against the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion crack­down, a gov­ern­ment lawyer said Fri­day.

The records in a fed­er­al stu­dent data­base main­tained by U.S. Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment had been ter­mi­nat­ed in re­cent weeks, of­ten with­out the stu­dents or their schools be­ing no­ti­fied. Judges around the coun­try had al­ready is­sued or­ders tem­porar­i­ly restor­ing the stu­dents’ records in dozens of law­suits chal­leng­ing the ter­mi­na­tions.

More than 1,200 stu­dents na­tion­wide sud­den­ly lost their le­gal sta­tus or had visas re­voked, leav­ing them at risk for de­por­ta­tion. Some left the coun­try while oth­ers have gone in­to hid­ing or stopped go­ing to class.

In one of the law­suits, a lawyer for the gov­ern­ment read a state­ment in fed­er­al court in Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia, that said ICE was restor­ing the stu­dent sta­tus for peo­ple whose records were ter­mi­nat­ed in re­cent weeks. Al­so Fri­day, the state­ment was read by a gov­ern­ment at­tor­ney in a sep­a­rate case in Wash­ing­ton, said lawyer Bri­an Green, who rep­re­sents the plain­tiff in that case. Green pro­vid­ed The As­so­ci­at­ed Press with a copy of the state­ment that the gov­ern­ment lawyer emailed to him.

It says: “ICE is de­vel­op­ing a pol­i­cy that will pro­vide a frame­work for SE­VIS record ter­mi­na­tions. Un­til such a pol­i­cy is is­sued, the SE­VIS records for plain­tiff(s) in this case (and oth­er sim­i­lar­ly sit­u­at­ed plain­tiffs) will re­main Ac­tive or shall be re-ac­ti­vat­ed if not cur­rent­ly ac­tive and ICE will not mod­i­fy the record sole­ly based on the NCIC find­ing that re­sult­ed in the re­cent SE­VIS record ter­mi­na­tion.”

Green said that the gov­ern­ment lawyer said it would ap­ply to all stu­dents in the same sit­u­a­tion, not just those who had filed law­suits.

SE­VIS is the Stu­dent and Ex­change Vis­i­tor In­for­ma­tion Sys­tems data­base that tracks in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents’ com­pli­ance with their visa sta­tus. NCIC is the Na­tion­al Crime In­for­ma­tion Cen­ter, which is main­tained by the FBI.

Last month, Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio said his de­part­ment was re­vok­ing visas held by vis­i­tors who were act­ing counter to na­tion­al in­ter­ests, in­clud­ing some who protest­ed Is­rael’s war in Gaza and those who face crim­i­nal charges. But many stu­dents whose sta­tus was ter­mi­nat­ed said they did not fall un­der those cat­e­gories or had on­ly mi­nor in­frac­tions on their record.

In law­suits in sev­er­al states, stu­dents ar­gued they were de­nied due process. Many were told that their sta­tus was ter­mi­nat­ed as a re­sult of a crim­i­nal records check or that their visa had been re­voked.

In­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents and their schools were caught off guard by the ter­mi­na­tions of the stu­dents’ records. Many of the ter­mi­na­tions were dis­cov­ered when school of­fi­cials were do­ing rou­tine checks of the in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dent data­base or when they checked specif­i­cal­ly af­ter hear­ing about oth­er ter­mi­na­tions.

At least 1,220 stu­dents at 187 col­leges, uni­ver­si­ties and uni­ver­si­ty sys­tems have had their visas re­voked or their le­gal sta­tus ter­mi­nat­ed since late March, ac­cord­ing to an As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­view of uni­ver­si­ty state­ments, cor­re­spon­dence with school of­fi­cials and court records. The AP has been work­ing to con­firm re­ports of hun­dreds more stu­dents who are caught up in the crack­down. —SAN FRAN­CIS­CO (AP)

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Sto­ry by JANIE HAR and KATE BRUM­BACK

Kate Brum­back re­port­ed from At­lanta. AP re­porter Christo­pher L. Keller con­tributed from Al­bu­querque, New Mex­i­co.