Reports indicate that the Trump administration is finding any justification to revoke student visas, including speeding tickets
Universities and students across the United States are reporting the sudden revocation of visas for dozens of international students. In California, Massachusetts, Ohio, Tennessee, Arizona, and other states, international students discovered that their visas were revoked without notice or clear explanation last week, in a nationwide operation that the Trump administration has provided few clear details on.
Traffic violations used as pretext
Some students report having their visa revoked over an offense as minor as a speeding ticket. “The government seems to be revoking visas and arresting and deporting students based on interactions that are too minor to have been of any interest in the past,” Ahilan T. Arulanantham, Faculty Co-Director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law, told The Los Angeles Times. “People with a reckless driving ticket and who then completed the driver’s training, for example. In some cases I have seen, there is not even a criminal charge or arrest, but only a citation.”
With no word from the Trump administration, international students across the country have taken to creating a data sheet to self-report their visa revocations. According to reporting by The Guardian, students at over 50 universities across the US reported that their student visas were canceled around April 4.
Major universities impacted
The recent wave of visa revocations have impacted students at several major institutions in California: UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and Stanford, among others. International students at several other universities have also seen their visas revoked by the Trump administration, including at Arizona State University, Harvard University, Columbia University, the University of Tennessee, among others.
Last month, Marco Rubio bragged at a press conference that he had revoked the visas of over 300 international students, specifically for pro-Palestine protest activity. “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 visa,” Rubio said at the press conference, which took place in Guyana on March 27.
AI surveillance fuels “Catch and Revoke” program
This recent wave of visa revocations has also renewed alarm about the State Department’s “Catch and Revoke” program. The controversial approach uses AI to scour the social media of visa holders, determining whether they show support for US-designated terrorist groups such as Hamas, which the Trump administration has used as an excuse to crack down on pro-Palestine protests. According to Faiza Patel of the Brennan Center for Justice, such a program would be prone to “rudimentary mistakes.”
There is broad concern that the Trump administration is using social media to target pro-Palestine students. Journalist Ken Klippenstein reported on March 28 that he had obtained a “sensitive” State Department directive, issued by Marco Rubio, which enforces a “social media review” of new and returning student visa applicants for evidence of “advocating for, sympathizing with, or persuading others to endorse or espouse terrorist activities or support” for terrorist organizations. Specific reference is made in the document to students who participate in “pro-Hamas events,” which is how Rubio and other Trump administration officials have referred to pro-Palestine protests.
