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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick Profile picture
@ReichlinMelnick
Sep 24, 2020 • 8 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
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Another major change to the legal immigration system; the Trump administration wants to eliminate "duration of status" visas for international students, exchange visitors, and international media.

Students would be limited to visas that last 2-4 years, with extensions allowed.
Under DHS's proposal, it seems that international journalists on assignment in the US would be effectively prohibited from remaining for long periods of time.

The proposal would limit their visas to at most 240 days, and require them to file for Extension of Statuses after that.
New restrictions on student visas would also be imposed by the rule, including limiting language training students to a maximum 24-month period of stay, requiring students to leave the U.S. more quickly after their visa expires, and setting a limit on changing educational levels.
Importantly, under the new rule international students would receive automatic six-month extensions of their status once they filed for an extension, which would in times when @USCIS was actually functional ensure that people would get an answer before their status expired.
Here's the full list of changes DHS says the rule would make for international media.

I don't know much about "I" visas, so I don't know how many foreign journalists use them to remain in the US for long periods of time. But these changes seem designed to make that impossible.
Here's another good thread going over some of the more fine details of the rule, from someone with significantly more experience in these types of visas than me.
Importantly, @doug_rand notes that the new proposed rule would effectively impose racist nationality-based limitations on some foreign students, declaring people security threats purely based on the place they were born and the nationality they posses.
Probably the biggest change in the rule would be a ban on student visas longer than 2 years for any person born in, or a citizen of, a country with a student visa overstay rate over 10%—meaning no bachelor/grad degrees.

As I show, that bans most of Africa

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More from @ReichlinMelnick

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick Profile picture
Jan 30
BIG news from Bloomberg, which confirms that ICE has gone ahead and *purchased* some commercial warehouses with the aim of converting them into mass detention camps.

This is likely to be the big detention story of 2026 — the literal warehousing of people in converted buildings. Image
ICE has already spent $172 million to purchase two warehouses, one in Hagerstown, MD and one in Surprise, AZ.

ICE will then have to pay more to convert them into makeshift detention camps. Leaked reports suggest each of these two warehouses will hold 1,500 people each. Image
The Hagerstown and Surprise warehouse detention camps are set to be DWARFED by the purchase of a massive warehouse in El Paso where ICE wants to hold 8,500 people, making it instantly the second-largest jail in the entire United States (behind only Rikers Island in NYC). Image
Read 6 tweets
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick Profile picture
Jan 21
🚨HOLY CRAP. An ICE whistleblower just revealed a secret memo authorizing ICE officers to break into homes without a judicial warrant, which DHS's own legal training materials say is unconstitutional!

ICE then hid the memo from the public, passing it along by word of mouth. Image
ICE secretly told its officers that any time someone has been ordered removed, ICE can break down their door.

It has been accepted for generations that the only thing which can authorize agents to break into your home is a warrant signed by a judge. No wonder ICE hid this memo! Image
Image
Chillingly, the whistleblower says that ICE trainers were directed (no paper trail?) to train all of ICE's new recruits that these administrative warrants authorize breaking into peoples' homes, even though DHS's own training materials still make clear that's illegal! Image
Read 9 tweets
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick Profile picture
Jan 18
Noem's claim is FALSE. Here is ICE's own data on the detention population among those arrested by ICE:

- 43% no criminal record (up from 6% last January)
- 29% one or more prior conviction*
- 28% one or more pending charge

*two most common are traffic and immigration offenses Image
Noem was confused by the question and defaulted to a different claim ICE makes; that 70% of people *arrested* by ICE have a prior criminal record or pending charges (also way down from January 2025).

As I've documented, that hasn't been true for MONTHS. Image
HOWEVER, total ICE arrests include thousands of people in criminal custody who are being transferred to ICE.

As of October, 2 out of 3 people arrested by ICE outside of a custodial setting, i.e. in American communities, have no criminal record. That's what Americans are seeing. Image
Read 8 tweets
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick Profile picture
Jan 13
HOLY CRAP. A real scandal; ICE sent a job offer to @LauraJedeed even though:

- A quick Google search would reveal who she was
- She hadn’t completed basic background check paperwork
- She should have failed the drug test

Signs of a total breakdown in the recruitment process. Image
Link to the article here, which lays out the entire shocking story; a full-blown job offer was extended despite @LauraJedeed never completing any of the required paperwork.
@LauraJedeed Read the rest of the article. After she submitted the drug test (that she should have failed because she's a user of legal cannabis), and despite having never submitted ANY other paperwork, ICE gave her a final job offer and a duty assignment.
Image
Read 4 tweets
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick Profile picture
Dec 25, 2025
There is nothing more inimical to the principles that our country was founded on than a government official declaring that due process should be tossed aside.

Everyone is entitled to due process. Everyone. We thought it so important we wrote it into the Constitution TWICE.
Of course the Constitution doesn’t spell out what “due process” means in every context. It doesn’t do that for ANY process. That’s why we have laws passed by Congress and judicial precedent.

And in this context, there are laws, rules, and regulations that must be followed.
Those pictures are from 2018. Do you know who was president then?
Read 14 tweets
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick Profile picture
Dec 8, 2025
In every single major immigration raid so far, the MAJORITY of people arrested by DHS officers have no criminal record whatsoever — not even any traffic violations or misdemeanors.

In Washington, DC, it was 84% of all those arrested. In Los Angeles, 57%. In Illinois, 66%. Image
That is simply not true. Not only is being undocumented not a crime, but to have a criminal record requires someone to have been arrested for an offense in the past.
Neither of those offenses are relevant to the question of whether being undocumented is a crime, nor the question of whether a person who may have committed a crime for which they weren't charged can accurately be described as "having a criminal record."
Read 10 tweets

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