The Trump administration said Friday it is restoring the previously terminated legal statuses of hundreds of foreign students in the United States while it develops a policy that will provide a framework for potentially ending them in the future.

The decision was announced during a court hearing before a federal judge in Boston who is presiding over a challenge by one of the many international students across the country suing over actions the administration took against them as part of Republican President Donald Trump's hard-line crackdown on immigration.

Their legal statuses had been revoked as a result of their records being terminated from a database of the approximately 1.1 million foreign student visa holders, putting them at risk of deportation.