The federal government is appealing a New Hampshire judge’s April ruling ordering the Department of Homeland Security to maintain the legal status of an international Ph.D. student at Dartmouth College.

The notice of appeal, filed on Monday, could reopen the case of Xiaotian Liu, a Chinese doctoral student who has studied computer science at Dartmouth since 2023. Liu was among more than 4,000 students who learned this spring that the Trump administration had revoked their legal status without explanation.

The appeal comes amid a period of unease for international students across the country. After a dizzying stretch of visa revocations, legal challenges and judicial orders during the spring, the Trump administration appeared to reverse course, abruptly moving in late April to restore the status of thousands of students. A justice department lawyer told a federal judge at that time that the government had begun work on a new system to review the records of international students.

The notice filed by the government in Liu’s case did not provide a basis for its appeal, and it was not immediately clear whether the government’s appeal signals it is resuming its efforts to remove the legal status of international students across the country.

Neither the Department of Justice nor a representative for the ACLU of New Hampshire, which is representing Liu, responded to a request for comment on the notice of appeal.

During oral arguments and briefing in Liu’s case, lawyers for the government argued that Liu’s status had not in fact been terminated in the first place and refused to confirm basic information about his status, prompting federal Judge Samantha Elliott to describe the situation as “a bit Kafkaesque.”

Lawyers for Liu said he first learned of an issue on April 4 after receiving an email from Dartmouth informing him that a “proactive check” of the federal government’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System had identified a change to his F-1 immigration status. His legal team filed a lawsuit three days later.

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