PROVO — A Brigham Young University Ph.D. candidate from Japan has had his international student visa revoked — perhaps because of a fishing violation from years ago.
Outside of a couple of speeding tickets, Suguru Onda — a husband and father of five — has had only one legal hiccup during his six years of study in the United States. He was reportedly cited for harvesting more fish than his fishing license allowed during a 2019 outing with his Latter-day Saint church group.
The fishing charge was later dismissed, according to Adam Crayk, Onda’s attorney.
Still, earlier this month Onda, who is a year away from earning his BYU doctorate in computer science, received notice that his student visa was being revoked.
He is counted among the two dozen or more international students attending Utah colleges and universities who have had their visa revoked in recent weeks — and have been directed to leave the country without delay.
“I was surprised,” Onda told the Deseret News, “but at the same time, I’m seeing so much news about (student visa revocations); but I didn’t expect it to happen to me.”
Onda’s visa revocation notice, according to Crayk, offered few details:
Termination reason: “Otherwise failing to maintain status.”
Explanation: “Individual identified in criminal records check and/or has had their visa revoked, service record has been terminated.”
Crayk told the Deseret News that his client went on a 2019 fishing activity with his Latter-day Saint ward.
“He didn’t catch a fish — but because he was the organizer or the face of the activity, (Onda) was cited for harvesting more than their license permitted.”
Onda went to court, the attorney added, “but the prosecutor was like, ‘Yeah, we’re dismissing this’ — and it was dismissed.”
But Crayk believes that the church fishing incident, despite the charge being dismissed, linked Onda’s name with a potential criminal case and led to his international student visa being flagged and revoked.
An immigration attorney, Crayk said that traditionally, international students were in jeopardy of having the visas revoked when they are connected with aggravated felonies, crimes involving “moral turpitude” and offenses related to, say, drugs, guns, protective order violations and certain domestic violence offenses.
“Something that’s much more significant than keeping an extra fish,” Crayk added.
Onda’s attorney added his “low-key” client is married, the father of five children and has no history of posting politically charged content.
Crayk is concerned that the Department of Homeland Security system is revoking international student visas involving minor criminal cases such as Onda’s without being verified “with human eyes.”
He is also concerned affected international students are not being offered opportunities to represent themselves and present their side of the story.
“We’ve taken away due process, which is just so fundamentally unfair.”
Crayk said he will likely be filing a temporary restraining order in the coming days on Onda’s behalf. A class action suit could be next as he continues to work with other local clients affected by similar international student visa revocations.
“A lot of these kids don’t even want their names used. They want to use pseudonyms because they really are afraid to death that ICE is going to come and get them,” he said.
Even as his attorney explores legal options to keep him and his family in the United States, Onda is making preparations for a possible return to his Japanese homeland. “I’ve started packing everything in case I need to leave,” he said.
A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Onda has been studying at BYU for the past six years.
He said the school has told him he could work remotely on his dissertation if he has to leave the Provo campus.
Onda said he was planning to stay in the United States for at least a few years after graduation. “We love the community here,” he said.
Onda added his family is doing as well as might be expected as they face an unexpected disruption. “They’re kind of sad about it but there’s nothing that they can do. … So we’re trying to do our best.”
He added his family is enjoying the support of their local Latter-day Saint congregation.
“A lot of families have reached out to me and brought us food and tried to offer help,” Onda said. “We couldn’t do this without their help — so I really appreciate all of the community, and especially for the church.”
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.