Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and the law firm of Shaheen and Gordon are asking a federal judge in New Hampshire to restore the legal status of at least 100 international students in New England who have been affected by a mass revocation of their student visas carried out by the Trump administration.

The proposed class action lawsuit aims to include every student in New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico who has had their student status revoked without explanation since March 1.

Lawyers indicated they had identified 112 students in the region who fit into the proposed class, as of late last week. Nationally, at least 1,500 students have had their statuses revoked, according to Inside Higher Ed.

International students are required to maintain their student status in order to pursue certain programs of study, particularly graduate coursework that involves paid research assistant positions. Those without student status risk deportation.

“International students are a vital community in our state’s universities, and no administration should be allowed to circumvent the law to unilaterally strip students of status, disrupt their studies, and put them at risk of deportation,” Gilles Bissonnotte, the legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, wrote in a statement.

The proposed class action follows a lawsuit filed by the ACLU earlier this month on behalf of Xiaotian Liu, a Dartmouth College PhD student who was informed he had lost his status on April 4. In that case, a judge ordered the federal government to temporarily reinstate his status, allowing him to continue with his studies. Another hearing in that case is scheduled for Tuesday.

Liu would also presumably fit within the definition of the class of students that the ACLU seeks to represent in this additional lawsuit.

Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.