BOSTON — The Army’s abrupt discharges of immigrant recruits may not be over after all.

Faced with legal challenges from some of the recruits, who said they had been expelled unfairly on specious security grounds, the Army suspended the discharges over the summer and said it would re-examine its policy.

But an internal Army email message obtained by The New York Times suggests that the Army may be looking for different grounds for expelling the recruits that would sidestep the litigation.

The recruits had signed up for a program known as Military Accessions Vital to National Interests, or Mavni, which offered legal immigrants with vital language or medical skills a fast track to citizenship in exchange for military service. About 11,000 troops have joined the armed forces through the program since Mavni started in 2008.

The Defense Department ended the program in 2016, citing security concerns, and imposed strict new screening on thousands of recruits who had already signed enlistment contracts for the program but had not yet begun basic training. The Army flagged many of them as security risks, even when other federal agencies had cleared them for more sensitive jobs in the civilian world.