Trump says Putin may not want peace and may need to be ‘dealt with differently.’

Mr. Trump wrote that “too many people” were dying and that “there was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns.” He said he was considering banking sanctions as well as “secondary sanctions,” penalties imposed on nations or parties that trade with the sanctioned country.

The statement came at a sensitive moment in the talks to end three years of full-scale conflict between Russia and Ukraine and after the United States proposed a peace plan this week that sharply favored Russia.

Mr. Trump, who upbraided Mr. Zelensky at the White House in February and has at times cast him as an impediment to peace, has maintained that he is exerting pressure on both countries to secure a deal.

But after Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, that killed at least 12 people on Thursday, Mr. Trump wrote on social media: “Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Let’s get the Peace Deal DONE!”

Since the assault, Mr. Trump has faced some pressure from within his own party to take a harder line on Moscow.

In a statement on Friday, Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, urged Mr. Trump to place heavy sanctions on Mr. Putin, saying that there was “clear evidence” that the Russian leader was “playing America as a patsy.”

As recently as Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s ire had been primarily trained on Mr. Zelensky, who strongly objected to the U.S.-backed peace plan.

“I thought it might be easier to deal with Zelensky,” Mr. Trump said at the White House on Wednesday, comparing Mr. Zelensky with Mr. Putin. “So far it’s been harder.”

But on Saturday, Mr. Trump seemed to be losing patience with Mr. Putin. Shortly after issuing his warning to the Russian leader, Mr. Trump posted an image that showed him and Mr. Zelensky in the Vatican, where they had gathered ahead of Pope Francis’ funeral.

In the image, the two men were hunched over in stackable red chairs, apparently deep in conversation.

Mr. Zelensky, who also shared an image of the meeting, wrote on social media that it had been productive and that he hoped it would lead to a “lasting peace that will prevent another war from breaking out.”

“Very symbolic meeting that has potential to become historic,” Mr. Zelensky wrote.

It was a startlingly fast turnaround for the first overseas trip of a new president, and left no time for discussion of his tariffs on the European Union, his turn toward normalizing relations with Russia or his insistence that Europeans must take far larger responsibility for their own defense.

Mr. Trump told aides he wanted to make it back to his golf resort in New Jersey before the end of the day.

The pageantry of the funeral, including the seating of dignitaries and a moment in the service when world leaders joined in handshakes of peace, lent itself to diplomatic tea-leaf reading. But Mr. Trump’s meeting of 15 minutes or so with Mr. Zelensky was surrounded with a symbolism and mystery of its own.

Photographs of the session released by Ukraine showed that the meeting took place in St. Peter’s Basilica, the two men perched on cushioned metal chairs, deep in conversation as they waited for the services to begin. It was a remarkable scene — an impromptu meeting between two men who have made no secret of their deep dislike and distrust for each other.

It was the first time they had seen each other since their contentious encounter in the Oval Office in late February, which ended in a televised argument over Mr. Trump’s turn away from Kyiv, and toward a new relationship with Russia. Mr. Zelensky was told to leave the White House, his lunch left uneaten and an economic partnership deal left unsigned.

A White House spokesman, Stephen Cheung, called Saturday’s encounter at the funeral a “very productive discussion,” but gave no details. In a later post on X, Mr. Zelensky described the brief talk as a “good meeting” where the pair discussed “a lot one on one,” including security guarantees to make sure Russia does not use a cease-fire as an opportunity to rearm and attack again.

Mr. Trump’s speedy departure came despite a suggestion from a Ukrainian spokesman that more talks would take place in Rome on Saturday. After Mr. Trump boarded Air Force One to leave, the spokesman then said a second meeting would not occur because of the “very tight schedules of the presidents.”

The short meeting came at a critical moment in the push to end the war between Ukraine and Russia, with Mr. Trump trying to push Mr. Zelensky and President Vladimir V. Putin into direct talks.

“They are very close to a deal,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social late Friday, after landing in Rome. “The two sides should now meet, at very high levels, to ‘finish it off.’”

But as Mr. Zelensky arrived in Rome, Russia claimed that it had retaken a last village in Kursk, the Russian territory that Ukraine invaded last summer, partly to gain leverage in negotiations. Ukraine denied that its forces had fully withdrawn.

Earlier this week, the United States presented Ukraine with a plan for a cease-fire that would give Russia de facto control over all of the lands it has illegally seized since the invasion began three years ago. The proposal also includes a formal recognition by the United States that the Crimean Peninsula, seized by Moscow in 2014, is now Russian territory, a major reversal of American policy.

Mr. Zelensky said this past week that Ukraine would never make that concession. But he traveled to Rome with a counterproposal, Ukrainian officials said, that would end the conflict on far less generous terms for Russia, and that would include billions of dollars in reparations for Ukraine, paid by Russia. The counteroffer makes no mention, though, of whether Ukraine would fully regain Crimea or other territory seized by Russia, and postpones discussion of territorial issues until after a cease-fire.

Neither proposal meets several of Mr. Putin’s demands, including that the size of Ukraine’s military be sharply limited.

Mr. Trump, flying back home, posted a lengthy message blaming Ukraine’s plight in part on his predecessors, Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., the latter of whom had been sitting four rows behind him at the funeral. “This is Sleepy Joe Biden’s War, not mine,” he wrote.

He also criticized Russia’s leader. “There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and town over the last few days,” he wrote. “It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along.” Mr. Trump also threatened new sanctions against Russia in the post.

Mr. Zelensky’s description of the meeting made clear that he had learned a lesson from his Oval Office encounter: Always show gratitude, even if sharp disagreements remain.

“Very symbolic meeting that has potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results,” he wrote. He ended with: “Thank you @POTUS.”

Among the points covered in the discussion, he wrote, were a “full and unconditional ceasefire,” and a “reliable and lasting peace that will prevent another war from breaking out.” The last was noteworthy: Mr. Trump’s proposal has only vague security guarantees for Ukraine. The Ukrainian proposal calls for a European peacekeeping force with the United States providing backup.

Mr. Zelensky also met with other leaders, including Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain. In a post on X, Mr. Macron, who included a photo of himself walking with the Ukrainian leader, said Mr. Zelensky was “ready for an unconditional ceasefire.” The offices of Ms. Meloni and Mr. Starmer emphasized Mr. Zelensky’s desire to “secure a just and lasting peace.”

After his inauguration, Mr. Trump had made clear that he wanted his first trip overseas in this term to be to the Middle East, starting with Saudi Arabia, the site of his initial visit during his first term in office.

Instead, his first trip ended up in Italy at the funeral, where he was surrounded by European leaders he has been denouncing as freeloaders unwilling to pay their share of the continent’s defense, and leaders of the European Union, which he said was “formed in order to screw the United States.”

The service itself offered a reminder of how Pope Francis had strongly criticized the Trump administration’s policy on mass deportations of migrants.

During the homily, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re referred to the pontiff’s trip to the border between Mexico and the United States, one of his many “gestures and exhortations in favor of refugees and displaced persons.”

There was a certain irony in the meeting between Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump at the funeral. The pope initially struggled to strike a balance between showing support for what he referred to as “martyred Ukraine” and his effort to avoid taking outright sides in the war. In 2023, he alluded to a secret “mission” to bring peace to Ukraine that failed to bear fruit. The pope, who called for “the boldness needed to open the door to negotiation” in his final Christmas address, would have surely welcomed any moves toward peace.

The foreign dignitaries who attended the funeral were seated in alphabetical order based on their country’s name in French. That put Mr. Trump, wearing a blue suit in a crowd dressed mostly in black, and the first lady, Melania Trump, in between the leaders of Finland and Estonia and just down from Mr. Macron.

In the absence of more substantive meetings, Mr. Trump’s every handshake and conversation was scrutinized for political significance at a moment of trans-Atlantic discord. He briefly greeted Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, who was sitting a few chairs down from him. In the past three months, Ms. von der Leyen was conspicuously absent from the leaders visiting the White House.

He chatted briefly with Mr. Macron, Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Starmer before the services began.

The office of Ms. Meloni, who has a friendly relationship with Mr. Trump, released photos showing him with his hand on her shoulder and another showing her walking beside Mr. and Mrs. Trump, apparently in conversation, inside St. Peter’s Basilica. Neither Ms. Meloni’s office nor the White House released any statements suggesting that substantial talks took place.

Maria Varenikova contributed reporting from Kyiv; Stephen Castle from London; Ségolène Le Stradic from Paris; and Emma Bubola and Josephine de La Bruyère from Rome.

Mr. Araghchi said the negotiations would resume next Saturday with Oman continuing to mediate the talks, which include Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s special envoy, and the teams of experts.

“The atmosphere of the negotiations was very serious and productive,” he said. “We moved away from some of the larger issues, but it doesn’t mean we have resolved all our differences.”

“We have disagreements on issues large and small,” he added, “but there will be discussions in capitals this week to reduce our differences.”

A senior American official said that next round of talks would be in Europe, with Oman facilitating. The official said the talks lasted four hours, and called them productive.

“I think we’re going to make a deal with Iran. Nobody else could do that,” Mr. Trump predicted in an interview with Time magazine published on Friday. Mr. Trump abandoned a previous nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 during his first term, saying it was a flawed agreement.

The talks have the potential to reshape regional and global security by reducing the chance of a U.S.-backed Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities and preventing Iran from producing a nuclear weapon. A deal could also transform Iran’s economic and political landscape by easing American sanctions and opening the country up to foreign investors.

What’s happening on Saturday?

Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy; Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister; and teams of technical experts from both sides met in the Gulf sultanate of Oman, which is mediating the talks. Iranian state media reported that the talks began around midday.

This round included the nuts-and-bolts “expert talks,” which bring together nuclear and financial teams from both sides to hash out technical details, such as the monitoring of Iran’s nuclear facilities, its uranium enrichment levels and what would happen to its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, along with easing sanctions.

Mr. Trump himself has defined the objective of the negotiations as preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Officials in his administration, however, have sent mixed messages about what that means.

This goal would not address other concerns Israel has with Iran’s advanced missile program, its support of proxy militias around the Middle East and its hostility to Israel.

An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghai, said on Saturday that the issue of the country’s defense and missile capabilities had “not been and will not be raised in indirect negotiations with the United States.”

What’s at stake?

A new nuclear agreement could delay or avert a broader conflict between Iran and Israel and the United States. Israel and Iran have traded direct attacks since the war in Gaza began in 2023.

Last week, The New York Times reported that Israel had planned to attack Iranian nuclear sites as soon as next month, but it was waved off by Mr. Trump, who wanted to negotiate an agreement with Tehran instead.

Mr. Trump, in his Time interview, said he did not stop Israel’s attack.

“But I didn’t make it comfortable for them, because I think we can make a deal without the attack. I hope we can,” he said. “It’s possible we’ll have to attack because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.”

Iran has been enriching uranium to around 60 percent purity, just short of the levels needed to produce a weapon. It has amassed enough to build several bombs if it chooses to weaponize, according to the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, and the I.A.E.A. has said it has not found signs of weaponization.

If its nuclear facilities are attacked, Iran has said it would retaliate fiercely and would consider leaving the U.N. Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Iran’s economy and the future of its 90 million people are also on the line.

Years of sanctions have created chronic inflation — exacerbated by economic mismanagement and corruption. Now, many Iranians say they feel trapped in a downward spiral and hope that a U.S.-Iran deal would help.

What happened in previous talks?

The first round of nuclear talks was in Oman two weeks ago, followed by a second round in Rome last weekend.

Both sides have said the negotiations have been constructive and that they were moving in the right direction.

Iranian officials have said they are willing to reduce enrichment levels to those specified in the 2015 nuclear agreement with the Obama administration — 3.67 percent — around the level needed to produce fuel for nuclear power plants.

What are the sticking points?

The question of whether to allow Iran to continue enriching uranium has divided Mr. Trump’s advisers.

Mr. Witkoff has described a possible agreement that would allow Iran to enrich uranium at the low levels needed to produce fuel for energy, along with monitoring.

But in a podcast interview this past week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that Iran could have a civilian nuclear program without enriching uranium domestically — by importing enriched uranium, as other countries do.

Mike Waltz, the national security adviser, has said the United States was seeking a total dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program, a position Iran has deemed a nonstarter.

Iran invited the United States to invest in its nuclear program and help build 19 more nuclear reactors as an extra measure of security, according to Mr. Araghchi, the foreign minister.

“The trillion-dollar opportunity that our economy presents may be open to U.S. enterprises,” Mr. Araghchi said in a speech he shared on social media. “This includes companies which can help us generate clean electricity from non-hydrocarbon sources.”

Agreeing to limits on how much enriched uranium Iran can possess and to what level it can enrich exposes Mr. Trump to criticism that he is only replicating the key elements of the Obama-era nuclear agreement.

Analysts say some possible measures to improve on the old deal could include more stringent monitoring of Iran’s nuclear activities, joint ventures to run the nuclear facilities and making Iran’s guarantees permanent.

How did we get here?

The two sides came into the negotiations with deep distrust.

The previous deal between Iran and the United States and other world powers was called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

It put measures in place to prevent Iran from weaponizing its nuclear program by capping enrichment of uranium at 3.5 percent, transferring stockpiles of enriched uranium to Russia and allowing monitoring cameras and inspections by the I.A.E.A.

European companies pulled out of Iran, and banks stopped working with Iran, fearing U.S. sanctions.

About a year after the deal was reached, Iran, not seeing any financial benefits, moved away from its obligations and increased its levels uranium enrichment, gradually reaching 60 percent.

What comes next?

So far, there appears to be political will on both sides to reach a new deal, and discussions are scheduled to continue.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had barred negotiating with Mr. Trump in the past, authorized the talks and said the negotiating team has his support.

But a deal is not necessarily around the corner.

Talks could still break down at the technical level, which was the most challenging part of previous negotiations.

It is also possible that an interim deal could be reached to freeze uranium enrichment while a permanent deal is hashed out.

Lara Jakes and David E. Sanger contributed reporting.

“The government contends that this is all OK because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,” wrote Judge Doughty, a conservative Trump appointee. “But the court doesn’t know that.”

Asserting that “it is illegal and unconstitutional to deport” a U.S. citizen, Judge Doughty set a hearing for May 16 to explore his “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”

The case of V.M.L., which was reported earlier by Politico, is the latest challenge to the legality of several aspects of President Trump’s aggressive deportation efforts.

The administration has already been blocked by seven federal judges in courts across the country from removing Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members to El Salvador under a rarely invoked wartime statute. It has also created an uproar by wrongfully deporting a Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, to El Salvador and so far refusing to work to bring him back.

According to court papers, the 2-year-old girl had accompanied her mother, Jenny Carolina Lopez Villela, and her older sister, Valeria, to an immigration appointment in New Orleans on Tuesday when they were taken into custody by officials from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Ms. Lopez Villela was scheduled for an expedited removal from the country on Friday. And in a filing to Judge Doughty, lawyers for the Justice Department claimed that she “made known to ICE officials that she wanted to retain custody of V.M.L. and for V.M.L. to go” with her to Honduras.

But in a petition filed by the child’s custodian, Trish Mack, on Thursday, her father claimed that when he spoke briefly with Ms. Lopez Villela, he could hear her and the children crying. The father reminded her, the petition said, that “their daughter was a U.S. citizen and could not be deported.”

The father, who was not identified by name in the petition, tried to give Ms. Lopez Villela the phone number for a lawyer, but he claims that officials cut short the call.

The detention of V.M.L. “is without any basis in law and violates her fundamental due process rights,” the petition said. “She seeks this court’s urgent action and asks the court to order her immediate release to her custodian Trish Mack, who is ready and waiting to take her home.”

Judge Doughty said in his order that he tried to investigate what had happened himself by trying to get Ms. Lopez Villela on the phone on Friday shortly after noon to “survey her consent and custodial rights.”

The judge expressed concern that a plane carrying the mother and her daughters was by then already “above the Gulf of America.” His suspicions were confirmed, he wrote, when a lawyer for the Justice Department told him at 1:06 p.m. that day that Ms. Lopez Villela and presumably her children “had just been released in Honduras.”

The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

The lawsuit centers on an April 3 memo the Trump administration sent to states, requiring them to certify that they do not use certain diversity, equity and inclusion programs that the administration has said are illegal.

States that did not certify risked losing federal funding for low-income students.

Rob Bonta, the California attorney general, said at a news conference on Friday that the Trump administration had distorted federal civil rights law to force states to abandon legal diversity programs.

“California hasn’t and won’t capitulate. Our sister states won’t capitulate,” Mr. Bonta said, adding that the Trump administration’s D.E.I. order was vague and impractical to enforce, and that D.E.I. programs are “entirely legal” under civil rights law.

The Trump administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday evening.

The administration has argued that certain diversity programs in schools violate federal civil rights law, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs that receive federal funding.

It has based its argument on the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling ending the use of race in college admissions, arguing that the decision applies to the use of race in education more broadly.

The administration has not offered a specific list of D.E.I. initiatives it deems illegal. But it has suggested that efforts to provide targeted academic support or counseling to specific groups of students amount to illegal segregation. And it has argued that lessons on concepts such as white privilege or structural racism, which posits that racism is embedded in social institutions, are discriminatory.

The lawsuit came a day after the Trump administration was ordered to pause any enforcement of its April 3 memo, in separate federal lawsuits brought by teachers’ unions and the N.A.A.C.P., among others.

Mr. Bonta said that the lawsuit by the 19 states brought forward separate claims and represented the “strong and unique interest” of states to ensure that billions of federal dollars appropriated by Congress reach students.

“We have different claims that we think are very strong claims,” he said.

Loss of federal funding would be catastrophic for students, said Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, an adversary of President Trump who previously won a civil fraud case against him.

She noted that school districts in Buffalo and Rochester rely on federal funds for nearly 20 percent of their revenue and said she was suing to “uphold our nation’s civil rights laws and protect our schools and the students who rely on them.”

Critics have said the law was already largely toothless, and officials in the first Trump administration were routinely accused of violating it, with little punishment meted out. And the changes do not roll back Hatch Act restrictions entirely, but do so in a way that uniquely benefits Mr. Trump: Visible support for candidates and their campaigns in the future is still banned, but support for the current officeholder is not.

The move may not violate the law, because it will not influence the outcome of an election, experts say. But it threatens to further politicize the government’s professional work force, which Mr. Trump has been seeking to bend to his will as he tests the bounds of executive power.

“This is a really dark day,” Kathleen Clark, a professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis and a government ethics lawyer, said in an interview on Friday. A president should work to ensure that the public knows the government is for everyone, she said.

“When you go into a Social Security office, if they’re still open, you will be treated the same whether you voted for the current president or not,” she said, referring to the government downsizing efforts since Mr. Trump returned to the Oval Office.

“This is another example of Trump grabbing hold, seizing control of the federal government’s power, as though it was his own system, instead of acknowledging that he has a role to play as a public servant,” Ms. Clark said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Office of Special Counsel issued other opinions on Friday that will weaken enforcement of the law, by removing an independent review board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, from its role reviewing claims of violations. The office — which historically was independent but is now led by a Trump official after Mr. Trump fired its leader, starting a bitter court fight — will review accusations and send findings to the White House, which is unlikely to take action against its own backers.

The Hatch Act has been in effect for more than 80 years. It was intended to prevent presidents from handing out patronage jobs and filling the administration with political cronies.

Allowing the workplace display of support comes as Mr. Trump takes steps to drastically increase the number of political appointees in the federal government, which would allow presidents to install more loyalists in senior positions — the very thing the authors of the Hatch Act sought to prevent.

Federal employees have been under significant stress, many fearing they may be fired as the administration carries out mass layoffs.

Now, Trump-appointed managers could be walking around wearing Trump-Vance gear, said Richard W. Painter, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and the chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush White House.

“I think it’s destructive to allow it,” he said.

Hampton Dellinger, the Senate-confirmed head of the Office of Special Counsel until Mr. Trump fired him, said, “Keeping partisan politics out of government services has benefited all Americans, particularly taxpayers, for generations.”

During the first Trump administration, several of his top advisers were accused of violating the law, including Kellyanne Conway, his White House counselor, who was cited as a “repeat offender.” Mr. Trump refused to fire her.

The Massapequa district, whose “Chiefs” logo depicts an illustrated side profile of a Native American man in a feathered headdress, is one of several that have resisted making a change.

The name of the town, a middle-class swath of the South Shore where most residents voted for Mr. Trump in the November election, was derived from the Native American word “Marspeag” or “Mashpeag,” which means “great water land.”

In announcing the investigation, Linda McMahon, the education secretary, said that her department would “not stand by as the state of New York attempts to rewrite history and deny the town of Massapequa the right to celebrate its heritage in its schools.”

JP O’Hare, a spokesman for the state Education Department, said in a statement that state education officials had not been contacted by the federal government about the matter.

“However,” he added, “the U.S. Department of Education’s attempt to interfere with a state law concerning school district mascots is inconsistent with Secretary McMahon’s March 20, 2025, statement that she is ‘sending education back to the states, where it so rightly belongs.’”

The policy, introduced in 2022, was adopted amid a national push to change Native American mascot names or iconography through legislation and other moves.

When the ban was adopted, about five dozen New York school districts still used Native American-inspired mascots and logos. Districts were given until the end of June this year to eliminate banned mascots.

Since taking office for his second term, Mr. Trump and his administration have waged a relentless campaign against what they argue are illegal diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and have threatened entities that do not fall in line and eliminate such efforts.

The president has said he would slash funding for low-income students in states that fail to do away with such programs. New York’s Education Department was the first to publicly refuse to comply with the order.

Massapequa school leaders filed a federal lawsuit seeking to keep the “Chiefs” name, but the judge in the case recently moved closer to dismissing it after finding they had failed to provide sufficient evidence for their claims, including that the mascot qualified as protected speech.

In a social media post this week, Mr. Trump criticized New York’s policy and called for Ms. McMahon to intervene.

“Forcing them to change the name, after all of these years, is ridiculous and, in actuality, an affront to our great Indian population,” the president wrote.

In a statement included in the federal Education Department’s announcement, Kerry Watcher, the Massapequa Board of Education president, welcomed the investigation.

“Attempts to erase Native American imagery do not advance learning,” Ms. Watcher said. “They distract from our core mission of providing a high-quality education grounded in respect, history and community values.”

The back and forth only contributed to the anxiety and confusion facing international students as the administration has moved to cancel more than 1,500 student visas in recent weeks.

On Friday morning, Joseph F. Carilli, a Justice Department lawyer, told a federal judge in Washington that immigration officials had begun work on a new system for reviewing and terminating the records of international students and academics studying in the United States. Until the process was complete, he said, student records that had been purged from a federal database in recent weeks would be restored, along with their legal status.

A senior Department of Homeland Security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the students whose legal status was restored on Friday could still very well have it terminated in the future, along with their visas.

The changes on Friday came amid a wave of individual lawsuits filed by students who have said they were notified that their legal right to study in the United States was rescinded, often with minimal explanation. In some cases, students had minor traffic violations or other infractions. But in other cases, there appeared to be no obvious cause for the revocations.

Upon learning that their records had been deleted from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS, scores of students have sued to preserve their status, producing a flurry of emergency orders by judges blocking the changes by ICE.

“We have not reversed course on a single visa revocation,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security Department spokeswoman. “What we did is restore SEVIS access for people who had not had their visa revoked.”

It was not clear how many student visa holders have left the country to date after their records were deleted; facing the prospect of arrest, at least a handful have left before risking deportation. But the Trump administration had stoked panic among students who found themselves under threat of detention and deportation. A handful of students, including a graduate student at Cornell, have voluntarily left the country after abandoning their legal fight.

“It is good to see ICE recognize the illegality of its actions canceling SEVIS registrations for these students,” said Charles Kuck, an immigration lawyer who led a separate lawsuit over the revocations. “Sad that it took losing 50 times. What we don’t yet know is what ICE will do to repair the damage it has done, especially for those students who lost jobs and offers and had visas revoked.”

Judges reviewing the lawsuits so far have shown significant doubt that the abrupt changes to scores of students’ legal status are lawful, especially given the haphazard and often seemingly arbitrary way the administration has proceeded.

In March, the Trump administration moved to cancel visas and begin deportation proceedings against a number of students who had participated in demonstrations against Israel during the wave of campus protests last year over the war in Gaza. Federal judges had halted some of those revocations and slammed the brakes on efforts to remove those students from the country.

But in recent weeks, many students received word that their records had been deleted from the SEVIS database. That caused a wave of panic across the country among students and academics whose prospects of finishing a degree or completing graduate research were upended without warning.

By Friday evening, the government had already started moving to dismiss lawsuits over the SEVIS deletions, arguing that the administration’s policy change had made them unnecessary, since deleted records would be restored.

Other lawsuits, including a potential class action involving a number of states in New England, have moved forward, seeking to stop the administration from more broadly from carrying out further mass cancellations.

Another case out of Massachusetts, focused on instances where students were targeted over their speech in support of Palestine, a group has sued to prevent the administration from seeking to remove international students on First Amendment grounds.