A federal judge in New Hampshire ordered the Department of Homeland Security to maintain the legal status of an international student who is pursuing a Ph.D. at Dartmouth College.

The Tuesday decision punctuated a dizzying stretch for international students across the country, more than 4,000 of whom learned in recent months that they had been stripped of their legal status without explanation.

Last week, the Trump administration indicated that it would reactivate various terminated records in a database that tracks international students, but lawyers for Xiaotian Liu, the Dartmouth student, argued those announcements were insufficient and continued to push for a preliminary injunction.

Judge Samantha Elliott granted that request, writing that “constantly shifting ground has made it difficult to weigh” the federal government’s arguments.

Liu, a computer science graduate student from China, first became aware that his F-1 student status had likely been revoked on April 4, when he received a message from college administrators.

Days later, Elliott temporarily ordered the government to reinstate his status. Tuesday’s order, which had the same effect as the earlier one, is more lasting.

Attorney Gilles Bissonnette, the legal director of the New Hampshire chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Liu, celebrated the court ruling.

“The court made clear today that no administration can circumvent the law to unilaterally punish students who have followed all of the rules and strip them of their legal status, disrupt their studies and put them at risk of deportation,” Bissonnette wrote in a statement.

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