Miro, a 17-year-old high school senior living in Dubai, has dreamed of studying at an American college for as long as he can remember.
After being accepted to several U.S. colleges earlier this year, he was weighing which to attend, proud to be heading to a country where he believed he’d meet people from around the world and gain the best job prospects in his planned major of mechanical engineering.
Then a few weeks ago he saw a video on social media that changed his plans. The clip showed a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University on a street outside her apartment surrounded by plainclothes federal officers who handcuffed her and swept her away in an unmarked SUV.
Miro learned from news reports that the doctoral student doing research on child development, Rumeysa Ozturk, had her visa revoked apparently because of a pro-Palestinian op-ed she cowrote for the student newspaper that federal officials say amounted to support of the group Hamas. Miro soon found other reports of foreign students suddenly losing their legal status to study in America for minor legal infractions, including speeding tickets.
After talking with his parents, Miro said, “We decided to rule out the U.S. altogether.” He added: “I just don’t feel safe going to the U.S. right now.”
Miro, who asked to be referred to by his nickname because of concern that comments might affect his future ability to get a U.S. visa, now plans to head to a university in Canada that he says he applied to as a “safety school.” He said he still hopes to transfer to a U.S. university in a couple of years — “if things die down.”
If more foreign-born students make calculations similar to Miro’s, the consequences for some U.S. colleges and universities could be disastrous. International students make up about 6 percent of U.S. college students, and they typically pay 2 to 3 times the tuition of domestic students, effectively subsidizing other campus programs.
Drawing top students from around the world also helps America’s strength in research and innovation, argues Fanta Aw, the executive director of the nonprofit NAFSA: Association of International Educators. “More than half of international students in the U.S. pursue STEM fields of study,” she said, referring to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. “And there are not enough American students who are graduating from undergrad with the skills needed in STEM,” making it a gap that will be hard to fill.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration revoked the visa status of more than 1,800 international students at 280 institutions, before moving in late April to reinstate the status of many of the students following public criticism and more than 100 lawsuits challenging the revocations.
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Trump administration officials had described the crackdown as part of the president’s campaign promise to get tougher on immigration.
“U.S. visa holders should know in no uncertain terms that the U.S. government’s rigorous security vetting does not end once a visa is granted,” wrote Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a Fox News opinion piece this month, stressing that visas are a privilege, not a right. Officials from the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, declined requests for an interview.
Civil rights groups and immigration advocates argued that the mass revocations of student status were illegal because officials did not properly follow rules for when records can be revoked, which advocates say set a high bar for such actions. The students had been winning in court: In more than 54 of the cases students won temporary restraining orders, with a federal judge in New Hampshire saying the situation was “Kafkaesque.”
Administration officials described the restorations of some students’ visa status through the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS, as a temporary step while they devised a new system for reviewing and terminating visas for international students, presumably one that is better able to withstand legal challenges. In court filings this week, the administration shared the new guidelines, which immigration attorneys described as a major expansion of ICE’s authority, because it gives the government greater discretion to cancel SEVIS status and begin the process of deporting students.
The message seems clear: The administration has removed the welcome mat that made America the most desired place to study in the world. Experts worry that will lead to fewer international students attending American colleges, more international students leaving voluntarily for friendlier countries and more U.S. students opting to attend college elsewhere, too.
“Nothing like this has happened before,” said Rajika Bhandari, a senior adviser to the nonprofit Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, who herself came to the U.S. from India 30 years ago to attend college. “We’ve never seen this large-scale scrutiny and revoking of visas that have already been issued. It’s shocking and extremely distressing.”
Many international college students say they are now living in fear on campuses that felt safe just a few weeks ago.
That’s the case for Anne, a master’s student in supply-chain management at Tennessee State University who is going by her nickname for fear of repercussions. Until recently, she says she proudly talked about her background as a visitor from Brazil. “But now, because of that situation,” she said, “I do not tell anybody.”
She has also seen the viral video of Ozturk being detained by ICE officers. And at least 10 students at Tennessee State had their SEVIS records revoked, including two students she knows.
Anne is now worried every time she leaves her apartment, and especially when driving her car, for fear of committing a minor traffic violation that might affect her immigration status. “Before leaving home, I pray. And when I get home, I thank God for making it home,” she said of her daily routine.
Her plan was to stay in the U.S. after graduation in May for a job she recently landed. To qualify to work, though, she has to keep up her SEVIS status as part of the Optional Practical Training program, or OPT, a program designed to let student visa holders work in the U.S. after completing their studies. Now she wonders if that will be possible, or if she should head back to her home country to make a life there.
Related: HBCUs open their doors wider to international students
Making things more stressful, misinformation has quickly spread around the campus, said Jewell Winn, executive director for international programs at Tennessee State.
“A student came in here yesterday and told me that some of her friends told her we were going to increase the price of going here in the summer to discourage international students from being here,” Winn said. She told the student that not only was that false, but that it went against everything the institution stood for.
The college is one of several historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, that has worked to grow its population of international students over the years, with about 8 percent of its undergrads now coming from overseas.
The university recently held a webinar for its international students to try to alleviate concerns and answer questions. Another goal was just to “love on them,” as Winn put it. “We’re going to show that we care because we do.”
“They’re preparing for final exams in a week,” Winn added. “How can you focus on an exam when you don’t know if someone’s going to bust through a door and take you to a prison somewhere?” she said. “It’s unfathomable.”
Philip Vasto, a graduate student in chemical engineering at North Carolina State University, was doing homework in his living room last month when his roommate Sal walked in with a dazed look on his face, saying the government had revoked his visa.
“I thought it was a mistake,” recalled Vasto, “and I started emailing people around campus.”
But it was true. Sal, an international student from Saudi Arabia working toward a master’s degree in engineering management, had just gotten word from the university that his SEVIS record had been canceled and that he should not return to campus, Vasto said. He could finish the semester online.
“His folks back in Saudi Arabia advised him to return to Saudi as quickly as possible,” said Vasto.
And just like that, Sal was gone, with plans to transfer to a university in another country.
Vasto wrote an opinion piece for his student newspaper urging university officials to do more to protect the legal status of students like Sal. “Do we not protect the Pack, or do we stand idly by while members of our community are targeted and expelled without cause?” he wrote, referring to the university’s Wolfpack mascot. “When one member of our Pack is harmed, are we not all affected?”
College leaders, however, say there is little they can do in such immigration matters.
“A person’s immigration status is attached to an individual, it’s not attached to a university,” said Aw, head of the NAFSA, the association for international educators. “The university can ask questions, but there’s not a way the police would allow your university to be your representative. Your immigration status is determined by the federal government. It isn’t determined by the university.”
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Alison Byerly, president of Carleton College, one of more than 500 university leaders who signed a letter criticizing President Trump for what they call overreach into higher education, said that the administration has painted a picture of international college students that runs counter to the reality on campus. While Secretary Rubio has compared international students to disruptive houseguests abusing the country’s hospitality, Byerly said: “They tend to be very hard-working, very ambitious, very strong students who really love getting to know American life and often are huge advocates for the kind of experience that we offer here.”
Some colleges, meanwhile, are actively helping with immigration enforcement. Several colleges in Florida recently signed agreements with ICE that allow campus police to help question and arrest students for immigration violations.
Once an international student does leave the country, their options to advocate for their visa status become more challenging, said Sirine Shebaya, executive director of the National Immigration Project, which is representing some international students in lawsuits against the Trump administration. That’s because without a valid SEVIS record, a student would have to restart the process of getting a visa.
Chasing out students without due process seems to be the point, though, she argues.
Even some international students with valid visas are rethinking whether they want to stay. “The students start getting calls from their parents saying, ‘You need to come home right now,’” said Shebaya.
International students are also scrubbing their social media accounts for anything that might be seen as political or making their accounts private to avoid government scrutiny, said Kate Ruane, director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. In March the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services announced plans to scan social media accounts of visa holders for what it deems antisemitic material.
To Ruane, that’s a “crisis for free expression.”
“It truly impacts what the conversation is, and that is in part the point — to eliminate points of view from the public square so that it appears like those points of view are not there and never did exist,” she said. “There is harm not just to international students but to the rest of us as well. Students come here in part because of our commitment to academic freedom and our independent and world-leading universities.”
Trump administration actions are already leading fewer international students to choose U.S. colleges for the fall semester.
“This is a terrible time of year for this to be happening because prospective international students are making decisions about whether to study in the U.S. or study in other countries,” said Bernard Burrola, vice president of international, community and economic engagement at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. “Do you want to commit to a U.S. university and spend quite a bit of money, and then worry that you might get your visa revoked for no reason?”
While data on college enrollment for the fall won’t begin to become available until later this spring, at the earliest, Aw, of NAFSA, is hearing from college officials who say they anticipate seeing fewer international students accept than expected.
A recent survey by StudyPortals, a service used by students to search for colleges, found that the number of international students expressing interest in coming to the U.S. plummeted 40 percent between January and March of this year because of concern about the crackdown on foreign students. An international student recruitment organization called IDP Education, meanwhile, says that U.S. colleges dropped from first to second position in the past five months based on which destinations users are searching for, according to figures provided to The Hechinger Report/Teen Vogue by the company.
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Fear has even reached college students who are U.S. citizens.
Sitting outside of the University of Minnesota’s student center on a recent afternoon, first-year student Brenda said she’s been watching the news closely and was particularly disturbed by the same video of Ozturk being swept into custody by ICE agents.
Brenda’s family is from El Salvador, and her friend recently suggested that she carry her birth certificate with her everywhere she goes — just in case.
She remembers being in eighth grade when President Donald Trump took office for his first term and fearing a crackdown on immigrants that didn’t turn out to be as severe as some predicted.
“Now it’s like, ‘Wow, this is happening, and it’s scary.’”
Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected].
This story about international students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, in collaboration with Teen Vogue. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
