At least 1,024 international students at 160 colleges, universities, and university systems in the US have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated since late March, reports said on Friday.
Trump’s administration has ramped up efforts to deport foreign students to their native countries over involvement in pro-Palestinian activism at different campuses across the US.
However, the colleges and universities alike have said that these are just baseless allegations since there has been no indication of the students being involved in the anti-Israel protests, reports claimed.
In messages to their campuses, colleges have said they are seeking answers from the federal government over its decision to terminate the visas and residence status of the targeted students.
“These are unprecedented times, and our normal guiding principles for living in a democratic society are being challenged,” University of Massachusetts Boston Chancellor Marcelo Suarez-Orozco said.
In the lawsuits against the US Department of Homeland Security, students have argued that the government lacked justification to cancel their visas or terminate their legal status.
So why is the government still targeting the students if there is no concrete evidence regarding their involvement in pro-Palestinian protests? While the visas can be cancelled for a series of different reasons, the colleges, however, are saying that some students are being targeted and singled out over simple infractions like minor traffic violations, including some long in the past. In some cases, students say it’s unclear why they were targeted.
“The timing and consistency of these cancellations raise certain questions about the procedure adopted by DHS nationwide. Whether written or not, of mass termination of student (legal) status,” ACLU of Michigan attorneys wrote in a lawsuit on behalf of students at Wayne State University and the University of Michigan.
In some of the popular cases, including the detention of Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, the US government has argued that the termination and cancellation of the student visas were important to restrict the ongoing pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protests taking place across US educational institutions.
