The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said Thursday that the State Department has revoked 300 or more students’ visas, since the White House is increasingly addressed to students born abroad whose main transgression seems to be activism.
Rubio warned that the administration was looking for “these crazy.” Throughout the country, academics have been collected, in some cases by masked immigration agents, and retained in detention centers, sometimes a thousand miles from their homes with little warning and, often, with few details about why they were being arrested.
“It could be more than 300 at this time. We do it every day. Every time one of these crazy people I find, I take off my visas,” Rubio said at a press conference in Guyana, where he met with the leaders there.
Many of those who were completed by Trump officials attended or were part of the pro-Palestinian protest movement that swept the university campuses last year, and although the Administration has not publicly said why these students are being indicated on others, at least one sought by the immigration of the United States and the application of the customs appeared in the lists made by the pro-Israal groups of extreme right as an object for the sport.
And Trump Allies, many in the government again, telegraphized for months before assuming the position, would seek to deport the students who openly advocated Hamas or other terrorist groups designated by the United States or after they participated in a protest of the unauthorized campus and were suspended, expelled or imprisoned.
The arrests are a sign of a broader effort by President Donald Trump to suppress the actions of permanent legal residents, the holders of student visas and others who live legally in the United States, one that threatens to undermine a fundamental American right to freedom of expression and gather, experts and defenders.
“There is something unique disturbing in sending a message to the best and the brightest in the world, which has traditionally attended the US universities. Due to its openness, due to their freedom, due to their intellectual vigor, and now they say:” We do not love you here, “said Ben Wizner, director of the American civil liberties, privacy, privacy and the technological project.
Trump’s “border tsar” Tom Homan, repeatedly said that the administration’s deportation policy is “worse first”, which means that prioritizes the elimination of people with criminal records or suspected people of being national security threats. According to data from the National Security Department, there are at least 400,000 non -citizens convicted of crimes in the United States. The administration has sent more than 200 Venezuelans to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, claiming that migrants have gang ties, they claim that the families and lawyers of some of those deported have strongly denied.
Going to students is a change of their declared objective of chasing criminals, said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst for the United States immigration policy program at the Institute of Migration Policy, a group of non-partisan experts, he told NBC News.
Bush-Joseph said that for non-citizens, “the government has so much discretion when it comes to granting or removing immigration benefits, and that can be done based on several reasons.”
The State Department has used as justification for some student deportation procedures, an immigration disposition dating from the cold war and gives Rubio the authority to deport non -citizens if their activities propose “consequences of potentially serious adverse foreign policy.” And US officials can revoke a student visa if they consider the student a threat.
Some scholars have already been deported. And arrests continue. Just this week, the application of immigration and customs arrested two students near their homes. One was Alireza Doroudi, a doctoral student from Iran who studied at the University of Alabama. ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comments on Doroudi’s immigration status or why he was arrested. The University said a doctoral student had been arrested but did not give other details.
Another was the doctoral student at the University of Tufts, Rumeysa Ozturb, a Turkish citizen who was in the United States with a valid student visa and left the street.
OzTurb was co -author of an opinion essay in the Tufts student newspaper last year criticizing the university for how he responded to students’ demands, asking school to “recognize the Palestinian genocide” and “disintegrates companies with direct or indirect links with Israel.” The essay, written by four students and backed by another 32, does not mention Hamas.
In response to questions about Ozturb’s arrest, Rubio questioned why “any country in the world” would allow people to enter their countries and interrupt university campuses.
“We gave you a visa to come to study and get a title, not be a social activist who comes and broken down our university campuses,” he said.
“If you invite me to your house because I say: ‘Oh, I want to go home to dinner’, and I went into your house and start putting mud on your sofa and painting your kitchen, I bet you’re going to throw me away,” Rubio said.
Ozturb is detained at a Louisiana detention center. It is not clear where it has been sent to Doroudi, and little is known about his case.
The National Council of American Iran demanded information about Doroudi’s whereabouts and if he had been accused of a crime and requested that the “unjustly detained” were released.
“Doroudi’s arrest occurs immediately after the students without the foundation of the students and a green card holder as an apparent reprisal against their speech and activism against war,” the group said.
Meanwhile, a group of extreme right has compiled names and other identification information of students and professionals, both non -citizens and American citizens, who alleges that they are “promoting the hatred of the United States, Israel and Jews on university campuses”, saying that their goal is to combat anti -Semitism in campus. Another group says that it gave the Trump administration a list of hundreds of names for deportation; At least one of the students listed in both sites, Momodou Taal, has been attacked by the Trump administration for deportation and were asked to surrender to ice. Taal, a Ph.D. Student who is the head of the American Visa, participated in protests at the University of Cornell who express their support for the Palestinians in Gaza.
Among the other students attacked by the Trump administration:
– Yunseo Chung, 21, a student from Columbia University who participated in the protests. She is a permanent legal resident and does not need a student visa; He moved to the United States when he was a child of South Korea. He is fighting deportation in court, and last week, a federal judge ruled that he cannot be arrested as the legal case continues.
– Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian student who participated in the protests in Columbia La Spring last. Immigration officials say he had surpassed his student visa and was arrested by ICE.
– Badar Khan Suri, a student graduated from India who taught at the University of Georgetown with a student visa when he was arrested this month. Suri presented a judicial petition in Alexandria, Virginia, hoping to be released from detention. He is detained at the Prairieland detention center in Alvarado, Texas, according to the ice stop locator. National Security officials said in X that it was “actively spreading the propaganda of Hamas and promoting anti -Semitism in social networks.”
-Mahmoud Khalil, head of the Green Card and graduated student from Columbia University that was arrested for its pro-palestinian activism on the campus, immigration officials said. He is detained in the Louisiana ice processing installation in Jena. Recently, a federal judge in New York, ruled that a challenge to his arrest and detention in New Jersey must be heard. The judge issued an order that blocks the government to deport Khalil as his case progresses. It also faces a separate deportation case in the Immigration Court in Louisiana, with its next hearing scheduled for early April.
Samah Sisay, one of Khalil’s lawyers, said that lawyers and defenders are concerned that more students will be attacked and that many may also face criminal charges for their activism if government officials cite possible terrorism concerns.
“None of them has a criminal record,” said Sisay. “This is an attack against speech, and I think that any type of criminal accusations that can be brought in the future would still be attached to this desire to relax freedom of expression and really say that certain speech is not welcome under this administration and can lead you to be criminalized, detained and deported.”
And it is increasingly clear if universities will support students in the face of growing efforts to deport students who speak. Last week, Columbia University bowed to Trump’s demands after he threatened to cancel $ 400 million in federal subsidies for “inaction to the persistent harassment of Jewish students.” The university agreed radical changes.
Ranjani Srinavasan, a doctoral student from Columbia University of India, is not stopped by ICE, because he went to Canada.
She told NBC News that she received a message on March 5 from the United States Consulate in Chennai, India, that her student visa had been revoked. She said she had participated in some protests. On the night of a great demonstration in which the students occupied Hamilton Hall, she had been trying to reach her bedroom and was among the dozens swept by the police, but the charges were removed late, said her lawyer.
Two days later, the ice agents appeared in their department, but another person in the department with her did not let them in because they did not have a court order, said Srinavasan. The agents returned the next day, and again they were not allowed to enter. Then, Srinavasan received a message from the International Student Office that said that his visa had been revoked and had to leave the United States and school.
Until then, he had been qualifying the documents as a teaching assistant and ending the last six months in his pH.D. program.
“If I had opened the door,” Srinivasan said. “Now I would be in a detention center.”
