Map shows where ICE has targeted pro-Palestinian students
The Trump administration has now revoked over 20 student visas belonging to those it deems as being pro-Hamas, it was reported Thursday.
According to Fox News, the Department of State said it had terminated the visas due to the "national security concerns connected to these foreign aliens." Over the past two days, at least two doctoral students were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Newsweek reached out to the Departments of State and Homeland Security for comment via email Thursday morning on how student visa revocation was being implemented.
Why It Matters
The Trump administration has made it clear that it will seek to revoke visas belonging to foreign students who have been linked to pro-Hamas activities, including college campus protests and distributing materials such as flyers. The move comes from President Donald Trump's executive order seeking to root out antisemitism, but the actions have been seen by some as an infringement on First Amendment free speech rights.
What To Know
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked Thursday about Turkish doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk's arrest by plain-clothes federal agents in Massachusetts earlier this week, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said was due to her taking part in pro-Hamas activities.
"We revoked her visa, it's an F-1 visa, I believe," Rubio told reporters. "If you applied for a visa to enter the United States to be a student and you tell us that the reason why you are coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds, but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings and creating a ruckus, we're not going to give you a visa.
"If you lie to us, and get a visa, and then enter the United States and with that visa participate in that sort of activity, we're going to take away your visa. Once you've lost your visa, you are no longer legally in the United States."
Ozturk's alleged promotion of pro-Hamas messaging can, so far, only be linked back to an op-ed the Turkish doctoral student co-authored in March 2024, calling for Tufts University to break ties with companies linked to Israel and acknowledge "the Palestinian genocide."
Another doctoral student, Iranian Alireza Doroudi, was detained earlier Tuesday. It was not clear why he had been detained.
The sweeping enforcement action targeting students grabbed attention when green card holder Mahmoud Khalil was detained by federal agents in the lobby of his Columbia University apartment building on March 15. Agents initially told him his student visa had been revoked, despite him being a legal permanent resident.
The Trump administration has argued that Khalil, who worked as a mediator between pro-Palestinian protestors and the Ivy League school, was promoting a pro-Hamas agenda. Similar claims have been made about the other students ICE has sought to detain, listed in the table below.
While Fox reported 20 visas had been revoked already, Axios reported as many as 300 had been targeted as part of a State Department program called "Catch and Revoke". There are currently around 1.5 million immigrants in the U.S. on student visas.
The administration is also planning to prevent schools from being allowed to welcome student visa holders if they were found to have been host to a large number of "pro-Hamas" students.
What People Are Saying
Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America's Voice, in a press release: "What happened to Rumeysa Ozturk is chilling. Taken off the street by masked agents in unmarked cars is something we associate with authoritarian regimes, not a country that claims to uphold the rule of law, freedom, and justice. This is not how a democracy operates or what America stands for.
"These actions send a broad message of fear, uncertainty, and exclusion. The United States has long prided itself on being a place of freedom, opportunity, and due process under the law, yet we are seeing policies that undermine those very principles. We cannot allow this to become the new normal."
Rubio, speaking Thursday: "I think it's crazy, I think it's stupid, for any country anywhere in the world to welcome people into their country that are going to go to your universities as visitors, they're visitors, and say 'I'm going to your universities to start a riot. I'm going to your universities to take over a library and harass people.'
"I don't care what movement you're involved with... We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree."
J Street, a pro-Israel group in the U.S., in a post on Instagram: "We are witnessing America's rapid descent into authoritarianism under Trump in real-time. As Jews, we will not accept Trump using our identity as a weapon in his attacks on civil rights and higher education.
"We abhor the arrests of multiple international students and Green Card holders on campuses – including this week's ICE abduction of Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts – in the latest flex of tyrannical power from Trump's extremist government.
"Rounding up people who express views different than our own does nothing to protect Jewish students; it only squashes free speech and dismantles democratic freedoms."
What's Next
It is likely more students linked to pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses will see their visas revoked in the coming days and weeks. Khalil's case is due to be heard again in New Jersey on Friday.