A Brigham Young University graduate student from Japan who had his visa revoked — seemingly because of an old fishing violation — has now had his visa reinstated, his attorney said.
BYU Ph.D. student Suguru Onda got word Friday about the change, his immigration attorney Adam Crayk told KSL TV.
“He is reinstated as if it was never revoked,” Crayk said.
Outside of a couple of speeding tickets, Onda — a husband and father of five — had experienced 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 Crayk.
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.
“I was surprised,” Onda earlier 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.”
The termination reason on Onda’s visa revocation notice, said, “Otherwise failing to maintain status.” And the explanation said, “Individual identified in criminal records check and/or has had their visa revoked, service record has been terminated.”
Crayk earlier 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.
Onda’s attorney said his “low-key” client has no history of posting politically charged content.
After the revocation notice, BYU told Onda he could work remotely on his dissertation if he had to leave the Provo campus.
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.
He added his family felt the support of their local 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.”
Gov. Cox asked Trump admin for more info
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said on Thursday that his office had reached out to the Trump administration for more information about the dozens of international students at Utah campuses who have recently had their visas revoked.
“We’ve asked them to give us a little bit of a heads-up when these things are happening. We’d like to understand better what the criteria are for those changes,” Cox said.
The governor noted that some of the international students had criminal backgrounds “that we were not aware of; that the universities were not aware of.”
For other impacted students, he added, “that does not appear to be the case — and so we would very much like to figure that out.”
Cox said in the past that President Donald Trump has talked about the importance of attracting “the most talented and brightest” from other countries to the United States. “We know how important those visas are and how important immigrants are to building our economy.”