Students from California to Ohio to North Carolina are losing their visas with no explanation, being taken off the street by plainclothes officers and finding themselves subject to accusations reserved for terrorists.
As of Wednesday, authorities had revoked the visas of international students in at least 29 states — with officials largely citing a seldom-used 1952 foreign policy statute to take aim at their activism. Others’ visas have been terminated seemingly for past charges like DUIs.
Attorneys and advocates say it seems as though people who have protested in support of Palestinians, those with previous arrests and those with certain political social media posts are the likeliest to have been swept up.
The focus on international students is part of the Trump administration’s larger immigration crackdown and deportation machine, immigration attorneys and policy experts say, with immigrants of all statuses being scrutinized.
“It’s just part of their whole plan about reducing immigration entirely,” said Jath Shao, a Cleveland-based immigration attorney who runs a virtual law firm and represents several international students, most of them Asian. “They come after the small and the weak — people who don’t have as many resources to defend themselves.”
Students and schools say there is mass confusion about the reasons behind the revocations, the legality of the government’s actions and what options those without visas or status now have when it comes to getting their education.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Which student visas are at risk, and what do they do?
Most of the students who have been targeted are studying in the United States under the F-1 and J-1 visas. The F-1 visa allows noncitizens to enter the United States as full-time students at accredited education institutions. And to qualify for those visas, people must meet certain criteria, including approval from ICE, proficiency in English or enrollment in courses that lead to English proficiency and sufficient funds to support themselves during their entire courses of study.
The J-1 visa, available to students, teachers, researchers and other specialists, allows people to participate in approved programs for studying, conducting research, receiving training or demonstrating special skills. And after their programs are complete, they are required to return to their countries within 30 days.
Which schools are being affected?
The State Department began revoking visas last month, targeting foreign-born students at schools across the country. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last month that the State Department has revoked hundreds of students’ visas, taking aim at international students who participate in political activism.
“It might be more than 300 at this point. We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas,” Rubio said at a news conference last month.
Those students have included Mahmoud Khalil, of Columbia University, a pro-Palestinian activist and green-card holder, whom ICE arrested and detained in early March, and Rümeysa Öztürk, of Tufts University, whom immigration officials apprehended on the street near the school a few weeks later.
Other cases fall outside the bounds of political protest, like that of Doğukan Günaydın, a Turkish student at the University of Minnesota, who was arrested in front of his home in St. Paul at the end of March because of a 2023 drunken driving conviction.
Shao said he has encountered many other cases of students in fields from materials engineering to epilepsy research. Some students were given vague reasons for the visa revocations, while others weren’t given any at all. Many schools said they were in the dark, as well.
Stanford, for example, said it found out about six visa revocations while it was doing a routine check of its Student and Exchange Visitor Information System database, which maintains information about nonimmigrant students and exchange visitors.
“It really feels like somebody wrote a computer program: ‘If arrested, then terminate,’” Shao said.
The State Department directed NBC News to comments spokesperson Tammy Bruce made Tuesday at a media briefing.
“We don’t discuss individual visas because of the privacy issues involved,” Bruce said. “What we can tell you is that the department revokes visas every day in order to secure our borders and to keep our community safe.”
The Department of Homeland Security recently created a task force that uses data analytic tools to scour international students’ social media histories for potential grounds to revoke their visas, three sources familiar with the operation previously told NBC News. They also said that the task force is searching for charges and criminal convictions on students’ records as well.
Why is the Trump administration targeting students?
The Trump administration hasn’t said publicly why such students are being singled out over others. But immigration attorneys and policy experts say it all goes back to the centerpiece of the Trump campaign: mass deportations. Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an attorney and policy analyst with the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute, said it is an example of the administration’s taking a “whole-of-government” approach to that immigration strategy.
“Here we’re seeing the Department of State working to cancel the visas of many students and those actions being done in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security, which is the agency in charge of prosecuting these deportation cases in court,” Bush-Joseph said.
In the cases of Öztürk and other students who have been arrested in recent weeks, the Trump administration has cited a rarely used provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. It allows the secretary of state to deport noncitizens if the secretary determines their presence in the country would result in “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, said it’s also an effort by the government to send a “clear message about who is unwelcome in the United States,” especially since most students appear to be from nonwhite backgrounds.
“U.S. immigration policy seems to be driven by xenophobia, white nationalism and racism right now,” Mukherjee said.
What legal rights do students have?
Multiple students have sued the government because of the revocations.
The government maintains the right to revoke visas for various reasons, including DUI convictions or related offenses. They can also be revoked for national security purposes at the discretion of the State Department.
“Given the fact that the executive branch has such far-reaching discretion in many cases, it can be really difficult to determine what’s going on in specific cases,” Bush-Joseph said. “As a quick example of this, for a green card, someone can meet all of the requirements and still be denied just as a matter of discretion.”
Typically, Shao said, students are unable to appeal visa revocations. However, they can still reapply for visas. And they still have other rights, including the ability to stay in the country, as long as they don’t leave and try to re-enter.
However, many of the international students’ legal statuses were terminated, as well, making them potentially subject to detention and deportation, Shao said. But the government typically doesn’t have the right to remove legal status without actions such as crimes of violence or unauthorized work or dropping out of school.
“Getting your visa terminated is not automatically a reason to reject your status,” Shao said.
Still, many provisions of the Constitution protect all people, regardless of their status. And that means the students still have the right to defend themselves under due process and can’t be deported without it, Mukherjee said. The Supreme Court affirmed that Monday in its ruling on the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants, she said. The court ruled that people have the right to challenge the use of the act and should be given time to challenge their detentions before they are taken out of the country.
“These are some basic principles of law, basic principles underlying the Constitution, and should be respected by all three branches of government,” she said. “We are at the brink of a breakdown in the rule of law and the immigration space.”
Often, other forms of immigration relief are available to international students, including humanitarian relief.
And while some students have received messages from the State Department urging them to self-deport, Mukherjee said they don’t necessarily have to listen. Instead, she advises them to seek legal support.
“Simply because the notice says you have to depart the United States immediately or you need to depart from the United States within five days, that doesn’t make it lawful or true or correct or accurate,” Mukherjee said.
Shao also said schools should step in to provide support.
“You accepted these kids to come,” Shao said. “The school should try to help the kids as much as they can.”