Oregon State University banner in Corvallis, Oregon. Aaron Ortega Gonzalez, a Mexican citizen and a PhD student at Oregon State, sued the Trump administration after his student status was revoked earlier this month.
Bryan M. Vance / OPB
A week after a federal judge briefly blocked the Trump administration from deporting two Oregon college students, one of the students is asking to be protected while his lawsuit plays out in court.
Aaron Ortega Gonzalez, a 32-year-old PhD student at Oregon State University, sued the Trump administration earlier this month after his legal status was revoked without notice. U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane quickly issued an emergency block that expires May 5.
In a filing Monday, Ortega Gonzalez asked the judge to go a step further and halt his deportation indefinitely, a step that would allow him to remain in the U.S. at least until a final decision is made on the lawsuit.
Officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In court filings, Ortega Gonzalez argues the government should be ordered to restore his visa status after immigration officials “unilaterally” ended his status by changing it in a government-controlled database.
They argue the government’s actions — both against Ortega Gonzalez and against dozens of international students across the country — are careless and light on legal merit. The Justice Department recently backtracked on several visa terminations, including the cases of roughly 50 international students in Oregon and Washington.
Federal immigration officials went into the database April 4 and nixed his student status, court records show, without ever notifying Ortega Gonzalez or Oregon State University representatives.
OSU officials discovered his student status had been altered three days later, during an audit of the database.
“The government provided no notice to OSU or Mr. Ortega Gonzalez prior to the termination of his student status,” Ortega Gonzalez’s attorneys wrote. “Nor did they provide an opportunity to respond to the termination.”
Seven total OSU students had their statuses deleted in the database between March 28 and April 4, an OSU official said in court filings.
In court filings last week, a senior official in Homeland Security contended Ortega Gonzalez had an “encounter” with Customs and Border Protection in 2014 at a port of entry.
Ortega Gonzalez’s attorneys shot back that the allegation is light on details and occurred when he was in his early 20s, several years prior to obtaining his visa and is therefore irrelevant to his time as a student in the U.S.
Since coming to the U.S. in 2021, Ortega Gonzalez hasn’t been convicted of any crimes and has followed his visa’s rules around student conduct.
Ortega Gonzalez is represented by three legal teams: the ACLU of Oregon, the legal nonprofit Innovation Law Lab, and immigration law firm Nelson Smith LLP.
The PhD student is researching the intersection of wildfire damage, erosion and cattle ranching. He works closely with Oregon ranchers to study how to rejuvenate lands scorched by fires.
His research is inspired by his upbringing on a ranch in rural Mexico, court records say, where he helped his family manage cattle. Ortega Gonzalez studied animal sciences in college and received his undergraduate degree in Mexico.
After a stint volunteering at a wildlife refuge, court records say, Ortega Gonzalez obtained a visa in 2021 to study at Sul Ross State University in Texas. A university official there wrote to Judge McShane that Ortega Gonzalez was a “beloved graduate student among his peers.”
“Aaron is a promising young scientist who will succeed in anything he sets his mind to,” Dr. Louis A. Harveson wrote to the courts Monday. Harveson founded the university’s Borderlands Research Institute, where Ortega Gonzalez researched ways to thwart erosion in the Chihuahuan Desert.
Ortega Gonzalez finished his master’s degree in May 2024. Last fall, he moved to Corvallis and enrolled in Oregon State’s PhD program. OSU officials noted in court records that the student is in good academic standing and that faculty had recruited him there because of his “substantial experience.”
His research is his sole source of income, attorneys wrote. If the courts don’t restore his status, he will no longer be able to do that work and his career path will be derailed.
Attorneys noted that, days after Judge McShane agreed to temporarily block the deportation, he had last traveled to a field site and fixed buggy weather stations that had stopped collecting data for his research.
“Had his status not been reinstated by this court, he would have continued to lose his income, his tuition waiver, and his ability to conduct his research including time-sensitive data collection,” the attorneys wrote.
They argue the government’s actions are impulsive and violate Ortega Gonzalez’s due process rights. The only explanation so far for ending his student status has been a note in the government-controlled database that wrote: “Individual identified in criminal records check and/or has had their visa revoked.”
Neither is true, attorneys said. They called the events “so opaque, nonspecific, incorrect and irrelevant that it is, on its own plain terms, not in accordance with the law.”