The Point: The Ongoing Assault On International Students

4/10/2025

The week’s Point is written by Steve Striffler, Director of the Labor Resource Center.

This past weekend we learned that the Trump administration revoked the visas of at least 17 international students or recent graduates attending Massachusetts universities, including those from Harvard, Tufts, Northeastern, Emerson, UMass Amherst, and UMass Boston; that figure is now over two dozen.  A version of this has been afflicting students and other university community members across the country.  Seven members of the UMass Boston community were targeted, two students and five members of the university community, including recent graduates of training programs.

This represents a new moment in Trump’s attack on universities and international students.  None of the universities were notified – reflecting a broader breakdown in communication between the federal government and higher ed institutions.  The targeted students were also not aware this was happening until they received a spam-like email.  Some thought it was a bad joke.

The revocations do not seem tied to campus activism.  In some cases, they may have been linked to minor legal infractions, like a speeding ticket, whereby the “system” flagged students who had been fingerprinted at some point (even if cases were later dropped or settled).  In other cases, there appears to be no known rationale at all.  As Miriam Feldblum, chief executive of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, notes, “This upends all usual practice by the government.  They are terminating students’ statuses in a way they have never done before and with virtually no explanation and little recourse to correct or appeal by either the institution or the students.”

This may be less dramatic than having armed thugs kidnap people off the streets and imprison them in Louisiana or El Salvador, but it has the potential to impact far greater numbers.  There is little reason to think this will stop at students.  Its indiscriminate nature makes it a truly frightening (and terrorizing) method through which the Trump administration seeks to reduce immigration – to effectively remove anyone not born in the United States (yes, he also wants to get rid of birthright citizenship).  Once a student loses their visa they become undocumented, legally must leave the United States, or be subject to detainment and placed in deportation proceedings. 

With few answers, little information, and limited communication with the federal government, it may seem as though universities have limited power to fight back.  To an extent, this is true.   But they are not powerless.  This assault on international students needs to be confronted head on.  

One possible path for doing so comes from University of California Faculty, who called on their campus leaders to “guarantee the following, and to immediately develop policies and put in place resources to ensure their timely implementation:”

First, the University should guarantee that each campus can and will provide legal support for those whose visas are revoked.

Second, UC must ensure that any student whose visa and/or legal status is revoked and who is either detained or deported can remain enrolled at their campus and can remotely continue their program of study until its completion, whether undergraduate or graduate.

Third, if any student or scholar receiving a fellowship, stipend, or salary from the University is deported, they continue to receive that funding until the end of their contract or relevant course of study.

Fourth, any staff or faculty member whose visa is revoked and who is detained and/or deported be given the opportunity to work remotely, to remain on the payroll and continue to receive their salary.

Fifth, the University, as sponsor of the legal status of international students and scholars, seek action in the federal courts to halt termination of legal status without due process or prior communication to the University.

Ultimately, we must turn back Trump’s assault.  In the meantime, at the very least, we must insist the UMass system protects its students, faculty, and staff – that our administrators find their collective spine.   The FSU – indeed, unions on campuses across the country -- need to be at the forefront of this struggle, not simply to protect our international students and colleagues.  As the Trump assault expands, it has become crystal clear that although his administration is targeting particular groups for all sorts of (often racist) reasons, the broader project is to use the power of the federal government to intimidate or silence all potential sources of political opposition.  Now is not the time for unions, particular those based in higher education, to be silent.  We must continue to fight back.