Number of detained Indian students allowed to return

A number of students who joined the fake Farmington University in Michigan have been granted a voluntary departure option. They are right now being kept at 30 detention centres across the US.

Fifteen of the students, including eight from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, have received permission to leave the country by Feb. 26. They will be allowed to return in the future if they are able to get the proper documentation.

This relief for the students came after a final hearing at a local Michigan court decided that the 15 students who were not involved in monetary transactions could return home. However, they will have to remain at the detention centres and submit flight tickets along with other details so that the authorities can drop them off and make sure that they board the return flights.

"All eight were given the option to review and fight back but the students asked for voluntary departure and it was granted," said American Telangana Association (ATA) president Kandimalla Satyanarayana Reddy. The eight students are from the Michigan Monroe Detention Center. None of them has an attorney, said Reddy.

ATA members also met Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin and requested her to talk to the concerned officials to make sure that the students are provided adequate facilities while they remain in detention.

"It is our understanding that these students were not aware that the university in which they had enrolled was fraudulent and their only mistake was to misunderstand a foreign work-study programme in their pursuit of higher education and career ambition. Indeed, they are not criminally charged," said Slotkin in her letter to the ATA.

Slotkin, who represents Michigan's 8th Congressional District, said that her top priority was to ensure the students' release. She said, "For these young people to be imprisoned in a foreign country, far from family and home, due to a case of potential entrapment is of course deeply distressing for them and for their families."