Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday the State Department has revoked 300 or more student visas, as the White House increasingly targets foreign-born students whose whose main transgression seems to be activism, NBC News reported.
Rubio warned that the administration was looking out for “these lunatics.” Around the country, scholars have been picked up, in some cases by masked immigration agents, and held in detention centers, sometimes a thousand miles from their homes with little warning and often with few details about why they were being detained.
“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 in Guyana, where he was meeting with leaders.
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Many of those rounded up by Trump officials attended or were part of the pro-Palestinian movement that swept college campuses last year, and while the administration hasn’t said publicly why these students are being singled out over others, at least one sought by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement appeared on lists made by far-right pro-Israel groups as targets for deportation.
And Trump allies, many in government again, telegraphed for months before he took office that they’d seek to deport students who openly advocated for Hamas or other U.S.-designated terrorist groups or after they participated in an unauthorized campus protest and were suspended, expelled or jailed.
The detentions are a signal of a broader effort by President Donald Trump to clamp down on the actions of legal permanent residents, student visa holders and others who live and work legally in the United States, one that threatens to undermine a fundamental American right to free speech and to assemble, experts and advocates said.
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“There’s something uniquely disturbing about sending a message to the best and the brightest around the world, who traditionally have flocked to U.S. universities because of their openness, because of their freedom, because of their intellectual vigor, and now say, ‘We don’t want you here,’” said Ben Wizner, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.
Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, has repeatedly said the administration’s deportation policy is “worst first,” meaning it is prioritizing removing people with criminal records or people suspected of being national security threats. According to the Department of Homeland Security data, there are at least 400,000 noncitizens convicted of crimes in the United States. The administration has sent more than 200 Venezuelans to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, alleging that the migrants have gang ties, claims that families and attorneys of some of those deported have strongly denied.
Targeting students is a shift from their stated goal of going after criminals, said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst with the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.
Bush-Joseph said that for noncitizens, “the government has so much discretion when it comes to granting or taking away immigration benefits, and that can be done based on a number of reasons.”
The State Department has used as justification for some student deportation proceedings an immigration provision that dates to the Cold War and gives Rubio the authority to deport noncitizens if their activities pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” And U.S. officials can revoke a student visa if they deem the student a threat.
Some scholars have already been deported. And arrests continue. Just this week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested two students near their homes. One was Alireza Doroudi, a doctoral student from Iran studying at the University of Alabama. ICE didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Doroudi’s immigration status or why he was arrested. The University said a doctoral student had been detained but gave no other details.
Another was Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national who was in the United States with a valid student visa and pulled off the street.
Ozturk co-authored an opinion essay in the Tufts student newspaper last year criticizing the university for how it responded to student demands, calling for the school to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and “divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.” The essay, which was authored by four students and endorsed by 32 others, does not mention Hamas.
In response to questions about Ozturk’s arrest, Rubio questioned why “any country in the world” would allow people to come into their countries and disrupt college campuses.
“We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to be a social activist that comes in and tears up our university campuses,” he said.
“If you invite me into your home because I say, ‘Oh, I want to go to your house for dinner,’ and I come into your house and I start putting mud on your couch and spray-painting your kitchen, I bet you you’re going to kick me out,” Rubio said.
Ozturk is being held at a Louisiana detention facility. It’s not clear where Doroudi has been sent, and little is known about his case.
The National Iranian American Council demanded information on Doroudi’s whereabouts and whether he’d been charged with a crime and called for those “unjustly detained” to be released.
“Doroudi’s arrest comes on the heels of the baseless arrest of students and a green card holder as apparent retaliation against their speech and activism against war,” the group said.
Meanwhile, one far-right group has compiled names and other identifying information of students and professionals — both noncitizens and U.S. citizens — who are alleged to be “promoting hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on college campuses,” saying its goal is to combat antisemitism on campuses. Another group says it handed the Trump administration a list of hundreds of names for deportation; at least one of the students listed on both sites, Momodou Taal, has been targeted by the Trump administration for deportation and asked to surrender to ICE. Taal, a Ph.D. student who is a U.S. visa holder, participated in protests at Cornell University expressing support for Palestinians in Gaza.
Among the other students targeted by the Trump administration:
— Yunseo Chung, 21, a Columbia University student who took part in the protests. She is a legal permanent resident and doesn’t need a student visa; she moved to the United States as a child from South Korea. She is fighting deportation in court, and last week, a federal judge ruled that she can’t be detained as the legal case continues.
— Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian student who participated in the protests at Columbia last spring. Immigration officials say she had overstayed her student visa and was arrested by ICE.
— Badar Khan Suri, a graduate student from India who was teaching at Georgetown University on a student visa when he was arrested this month. Suri filed a court petition in Alexandria, Virginia, in hope of being released from detention. He is being held at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, according to the ICE detainee locator. Homeland Security officials said on X he was “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media.”
— Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder and Columbia University graduate student who was detained over his pro-Palestinian activism on campus, immigration officials said. He’s being held at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Facility in Jena. A federal judge in New York recently ruled that a challenge to his arrest and detention should be heard in New Jersey. The judge issued an order blocking the government from deporting Khalil as his case proceeds. He also faces a separate deportation case in immigration court in Louisiana, with his next hearing set for early April.
Samah Sisay, one of Khalil’s lawyers, said lawyers and advocates are concerned that more students will be targeted and that many may also face criminal charges for their activism if government officials cite potential terrorism concerns.
“None of them have criminal records,” Sisay said. “This is an attack on speech, and I think any sort of criminal allegations that may be brought in the future would still be attached to this desire to chill free speech and to really say that certain speech is not welcomed under this administration and can lead to you being criminalized, detained, and deported.”
And it’s increasingly unclear whether colleges will support students in the face of growing efforts to deport students who speak out. Just last week, Columbia University bowed to Trump’s demands after he threatened to cancel $400 million in federal research grants for “inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” The university agreed to sweeping changes.
Ranjani Srinavasan, a Columbia University doctoral student from India, isn’t detained by ICE, because she left for Canada, instead.
She told NBC News she got a message on March 5 from the U.S. consulate in Chennai, India, that her student visa had been revoked. She said she had participated in some protests. On the night of a large demonstration where students occupied Hamilton Hall, she had been trying to get to her dorm and was among the dozens swept up by police, but the charges were late dropped, her lawyer said.
Two days later, ICE agents turned up at her apartment, but another person in the apartment with her didn’t let them in because they didn’t have a warrant, Srinavasan said. The agents returned the next day, and again were not let inside. Then, Srinavasan got a message from the international student office saying that her visa had been revoked and that she had to leave the United States and the school.
Until then, she had been grading papers as a teaching assistant and finishing out the last six months in her five-year Ph.D. program.
“If I had opened the door,” Srinivasan said. “I would be in a detention center now.”
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