Indian students among those impacted at Harvard, UCLA, Stanford and other educational institutions nationwide
Universities and colleges across the U.S. are reporting student visa revocations with some international students having had their visas cancelled for minor infractions, such as traffic violations.
Indian students are presumably among those impacted as there were over 330,000 students from India among a record 1.1 million international students hosted by the U.S. during the 2023–24 academic year, according to the 2024 Open Doors Report.
Harvard University is one of more than a dozen higher education institutions that is actively tracking and reporting the number of affiliated people who have been targeted by President Donald Trump’s administration in recent weeks, ABC News reported.
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These incidents are part of what appears to be mass targeting of international students by the Trump administration over alleged violations of their visa or green card conditions, ranging from minor legal infractions such as traffic violations to participating in demonstrations.
Others have faced revocations for social media activity, according to an Associated Press report. In many cases, the reason for the revocation is unknown or has not been provided by the administration.
Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, the State Department has revoked over 300 student visas nationwide, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on March 27.
“Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa,” Rubio said. “We will continue revoking visas every day. Anyone engaging in pro-Hamas rhetoric, online or in person, will face consequences.”
While visas can be cancelled for various reasons, college officials say this quiet wave of revocations—with little advance notice or explanation—marks a significant departure from past practices, according to ABC News.
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Based on non-exhaustive tallies provided by the respective HEIs, here are some of the colleges and universities that have been impacted:
Arizona State University 8; Central Michigan University 4; Colorado State University 6; Harvard University 5; Kent State University 3; Minnesota State University 5; North Carolina State 2; Ohio State University 5; Stanford University 6; University of Massachusetts Amherst 5; University of Michigan 4; and University of Nevada, Las Vegas 4.
Although an estimate has not yet been provided, the University of California system of schools has stated that its campuses — including the University of California Los Angeles, UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, UC Davis and UC Irvine — have been impacted.
Axios previously reported that federal agencies are scouring social media for signs of “terrorist sympathies” in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel. Actions as seemingly innocuous as liking or sharing content on social platforms have reportedly triggered investigations.
The Department of State has launched an aggressive review of international students’ activities, both on campus and online. An artificial intelligence-driven program, called ‘Catch and Revoke’, is being used to flag individuals suspected of supporting Hamas or other designated terrorist groups.
In one case, Indian national Ranjani Srinivasan, a 37-year-old PhD candidate at Columbia University, was forced to self-deport to Canada after her visa was abruptly revoked and immigration agents showed up at her door.
Another student, Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown University conflict studies student, was detained and told his visa had been revoked due to allegations of antisemitic speech and ties to Hamas. Suri denies the allegations and says he is being targeted because of his wife’s Palestinian heritage. He has no criminal record.
Meanwhile, according to a Newsweek report, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has ordered migrants who entered the U.S. via the CBP One app to leave “immediately.”
The Biden-era CBP One app—through which more than 900,000 people were allowed temporary entry beginning in January 2023—was used to schedule appointments at ports of entry and helped migrants live and work under parole in the U.S. for two years.
CBP One was a cornerstone of the Biden administration’s strategy to create and expand legal pathways to enter the United States in an attempt to discourage illegal border crossings. By the end of December, 936,500 people had been allowed to enter with CBP One appointments at border crossings with Mexico.
DHS said on Monday that Biden’s use of parole authority—more than any president since it was created in 1952—”further fueled the worst border crisis in U.S. history.”