Metro State student, ICE jointly agree to dismiss lawsuit after agency restores his legal status

An international student at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul and the federal government have jointly agreed to resolve the student’s lawsuit challenging the revocation of his legal student status.

In a stipulation dismissal filed Friday, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said the agency has reinstated legal student status for Rattanand Ratsantiboon, of Thailand, and pledged to not terminate his record in the future over his prior driving offenses that led to the initial cancelation on March 28. Attorneys for Ratsantiboon and the federal agency dismissed the matter with prejudice, the filing states.

“It’s a great outcome,” David Wilson, Ratsantiboon’s attorney, told the Star Tribune. The Minnesota Star Tribune has reached out to ICE for comment.

ICE also returned Ratsantiboon’s record retroactively to reflect “as though the termination did not happen.” Ratsantiboon raised the point in his initial complaint, arguing any gap in his immigration history could jeopardize his future in the country. The agency maintained the authority to terminate the status if he “fails to maintain his ... nonimmigrant status after the record is reactivated or engages in other unlawful activity that would render him ... removable from the United States.”

In the lawsuit, which also names members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet, Ratsantiboon said he was unaware his legal student status record had been terminated until March 31, three days later, when his school notified him that the database tracking international students listed the reason as “Otherwise failing to maintain status - student identified in criminal records check.”

Ratsantiboon, who’s studying nursing, faced back-to-back careless and impaired driving offenses in 2018. He argued the cases did not meet the standard to revoke his status under the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS).

“Minor misdemeanor offenses do not meet this threshold for termination based on criminal history,” the complaint states.

Ratsantiboon, who entered the U.S. in 2014 to attend school, was among several international students across Minnesota and nationwide who fought their SEVIS terminations and deportations through the courts.

In a similar lawsuit, Concordia graduates Salma Rameez Shaik, Akhil Pothuraju, Nithish Babu Challa, Shyam Vardhan Reddy Yarkareddy and Almas Abdul, of India, said they each were working for various tech companies when their student statuses were terminated without notice. A federal judge has ordered for their statuses to be temporarily restored as the group’s court proceedings continue.

The federal government reversed its stance on hundreds of student revocations following the series of lawsuits.

In the past week, federal judges have ordered the government to release two detained student-visa holders.

Doğukan Günaydın, a University of Minnesota graduate student from Turkey who was arrested in late March, remains in custody after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security filed a number of appeals to keep him behind bars.