The Attack on International Students

New surveillance and punishment systems are a warning to us all

Marco Rubio’s twitter bio used to boast that he was banned from China. He won the honor partly for his criticism of how China suppressed pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong and its dismal human rights record against Uyghur minorities.

The implication of Rubio’s boast was that an authoritarian state could not handle criticism from those who believed in democratic values. It turns out that this was wrong. Rubio was taking notes.

Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Rubio has become perhaps the most prominent voice justifying an American purge of political voices and immigrants with the most minor of legal infractions. He sits atop a system that combines a) new surveillance capabilities that are being used to monitor and punish immigrants, and b) almost no accountability or due process, with Rubio insisting that he has absolute discretion over the outcome.

Marco Rubio and President Trump have turned America into a place where masked security officials can come to your house or any public space, and disappear you for writing an op-ed in a student newspaper, or taking part in a protest. DOGE is central to building a cross-government capability to surveil and punish the public, starting with immigrants. The government is using Social Security to turn migrants into people who are officially dead.

The difference between how the Chinese and Trump’s government monitors and punishes it’s residents for their political actions is becoming harder to discern. How can America criticize China’s system of surveillance and social credit scores when the government is monitoring social media of its residents, threatening expulsion for wrongthink?

We should be worried by a government that claims such powers with so little qualm or oversight. They started with illegal immigrants, and now are making legal migrants illegal. Where will they stop?

In this post, I focus on the attack on international students. I was an international student once, and they are a perennial presence in my classroom. They are just one aspect of the broader attack on immigrants, but to understand the bigger picture of how state power is being used you sometimes need to get up close to the details.

The Government is Lying About Targeted Students

Source: Inside Higher Ed analysis, Ashley Mowreader/Inside Higher Ed

Why are these students being kicked out of America? When pressed by reporters, Rubio said:

We are not going to be importing activists into the United States. They're here to study. They're here to go to class. They're not here to lead activist movements that are disruptive and undermine the — our universities. I think it's lunacy to continue to allow that.

According to Rubio, students have vandalized libraries, taken over campuses, and done all sorts of crazy things. They are dangerous radicals.

If that justification seems a bit vague to you, well, it is. In fact, it is deeply misleading.

The reality is that we cannot rely on the Secretary of State to accurately explain why he is purging international students from America. He makes vague claims that they are threats, but refuses to get into the specifics. Instead, we have to look at the cases of individual students, and try to understand them. Based on those stories, we can see two broad categories of students being removed:

• Students removed for using political voice or being associated with protests — These are the most visible and obviously political cases, raising troubling issues about free speech. This includes Mahmoud Khalil, a former student who was a visible figure in protests in Columbia, Badar Khan Suri, an Indian scholar at Georgetown University whose studies peacebuilding, and or Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish PhD student at Tufts co-wrote an op-ed in a student newspaper opposing the war in Gaza.

• Students removed for minor infractions with the law — This is likely the majority of cases, but Rubio does not mention them. Here, students removed not for political voice, but for low-level engagements with law enforcement. Dozens of students reported that their visas were revoked for traffic violations, such as speeding. One computer science PhD student appeared to lose his visa because of a dismissed fishing license violation, which is exactly as dumb as it sounds. One immigration lawyer said: “This is totally unprecedented…A brush with law enforcement that didn’t necessarily result in an arrest or a conviction is all it took.” Her client had a DUI from a decade ago, which he disclosed when applying for a new visa, which was approved. But now that visa has been revoked. Another immigration lawyer spoke to a woman who had been arrested when a man assaulted her; police subsequently acknowledged she was the victim, but her visa was terminated anyway.

There may also be a third category: students who are genuinely dangerous radicals, or who have engaged in serious lawbreaking. But the administration has not shown that such students exist. They have every incentive to find some truly bad apples to justify their broad-based attack on international students, but have not done so. One reason this might be the case is that all of these international students are already subject to intense legal oversight: they have to go through a vetting process to get to the United States, and are subject to deportation if they engage in serious criminal activity.

What is common across both categories is the absence of any sort of due process where the government feels the need to present evidence to justify the revocations of visas. Non-citizens have less due process rights, of course, and some of those affected are suing. But broadly, the government is imposing dramatic costs on these students with little evidence of actual or serious wrongdoing.

A More Automated and Punitive Surveillance System

The system of surveillance is more automated and broad-based than before. Students are being pulled because the government is searching social media and databases for any sort of past legal infraction. There is no individualized investigation, or assessment of risk. Based on those searches, visas are being cancelled via the Student & Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS).

A blunt automation process can easily make errors. In some cases, students don’t actually know why their visa is being revoked.

What is important to understand is that the removal of students from SEVIS appears to be illegal. Federal regulations allow for such removal if students are no longer enrolled in class, or if they engage in unauthorized work, or if they committed a violent crime. But being convicted of a violent crime is very different from getting a speeding ticket. This gives the affected students the basis for appeal, but its an uncharted legal area since, as one lawyer noted “No prior administration wanted to break the law.” Here, as in so many other areas, the willingness of the Trump administration to break the law compels those who are affected to find lawyers to challenge them, something that many students will lack the will or capacity to do.

The new system is also more punitive. Students whose visas are revoked are now subject to immediate arrest and deportation, whereas in the past they could remain in the country as long as they were enrolled in courses, allowing them to complete their degree. A PhD student who has been in the US since high school, and was weeks away from completing his degree, had his visa revoked for an expunged 2023 DUI. In the past, he would have been able to finish his degree. Now he is told to leave immediately.

What is different now is that there is a clear sense that the current administration is actively hunting international students, labeling them as dangers in a way that no reasonable person would do. The Secretary of State is saying that people are threats to the United States in ways that defy common sense and deface American values like free speech.

It is hard not to conclude that international students are being targeted because they are at the intersection of higher education and immigration, two things this administration despises.

Deported or Denied Entry Because of “Expected Beliefs”

In at least some of these cases, Rubio is relying on an obscure and rarely used 1950s anti-communist law that he can remove people if, in his judgement, they create “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences”. (The law is formally known the Immigration and Nationality Act, and key provisions were added in 1990). The authority claimed by Rubio is truly breathtaking. Instead of offering evidence of actual wrongdoing by Khalil to a judge, Rubio instead issued a two page memo saying that “past, current, or expected beliefs” are enough to justify his removal, as well as those of other permanent residents.

Expected beliefs. We have a government that is claiming the power to remove individuals not for breaking any law, but for what they imagine you might believe in the future.

And it is not just students. The Department of Homeland Security has announced it will screen immigrants social media. The screening includes permanent residents, and will be used for immigration decisions. The administration has said it will pursue “terrorist sympathizers” or those expressing “violent antisemitic ideologies.” The practice was already in place for students for over a month.

The clear implication is that non-citizens have no right to free speech in America. There is little reason to believe the punishments of surveillance will be applied evenly. This is an administration that pardoned and praised people who pillaged the nation’s Capitol in an effort to overturn an election. It is stocked with figures with racist views. For example, Elon Musk gave a Nazi salute and has a history of antisemitic statements and platforming antisemitism. So, you can feel relatively sure that certain types of extreme views will be tolerated, and others will not.

The atmosphere was summarized by an ICE post on X (subsequently deleted) that claimed it was their job to stop the “ideas” from entering the United States.

Antisemitism as “Cover Story”

Again and again, the administration has argued that they are taking radical action to tackle antisemitism. For many Jewish voices, this claim rings hollow. And reporting about the internal discussions within the White House shows that it was often disconnected with antisemitism and driven by grievance. Antisemitism simply became the most effective of a rotating series of claims — around wokeness, DEI, Marxism, anti-white discrimination, anti-conservative discrimination — to justify kneecapping universities.

Kenneth Stern, a supporter of Israel, who heads the Center for the Study of Hate at Bard College, has bemoaned what he sees as the “weaponization” of antisemitism:

To me, one of the things that's important for our ability to combat antisemitism and other forms of hate is having strong democratic institutions. When we're assaulting free speech, that's McCarthyism. We don't have strong democratic institutions anymore.

A Jewish student interviewed on the Johns Hopkins campus said:

It's just incredibly heartbreaking that antisemitism is the device weaponized to enact this repression to ... induce this chilling effect on campus…So many students are just terrified. Not even protesting in support of Palestine, but protesting in support of anything.

A letter from Jewish Georgetown students, staff and faculty called for release of their colleague, Badar Khan Suri, noting how Trump was also putting them at risk:

President Trump is weaponizing Jewish identity, faith, and fears of antisemitism as a smokescreen for his authoritarian agenda, further damaging the campus climate for everyone. Making Jews the face of this autocratic initiative feeds antisemitic conspiracy theories and is dangerous for Jews, on campuses and beyond.

Using antisemitism as an excuse for the right to pursue long-held grudges against higher education and immigrants puts Jewish people, unwillingly, at the center of an authoritarian agenda. Yair Rosenberg in The Atlantic wrote an article “Trump’s Jewish Cover Story”:

Donald Trump and his allies have been using “anti-Semitism” as a pretext to advance a radical agenda that has nothing to do with Jews at all—and that most American Jews do not support…But the lesson most American Jews have drawn from their history as a persecuted people is that narrow nationalisms never end well for those who are different, because no matter their patriotism or contribution to the collective, their difference will always make them suspect. Jews may be inside the circle of concern today, but that circle is always shrinking, and Jews will ultimately not determine who it includes.

Here is a sobering fact: The anti-communist McCarran-Walter Act that Rubio is using to deport students was written by an antisemite, and in practice, used to block European Jews from entering the United States.

Campuses Filled with Fear

In justifying his new policies, Rubio claimed he was helping students:

You pay all this money to these high-priced schools that are supposed to be of great esteem, and you can’t even go to class. You’re afraid to go to class because these lunatics are running around with covers on their face, screaming terrifying things.

But as it stands, international students are the ones afraid to go class. International students are the ones worried about masked actors attacking them. In some Florida campuses, campus police have been deputized to perform immigrant roundups.

Here are some statements from students, who increasingly don’t want to use their names when talking to reporters:

• A Russian student compared the conditions to Russia: it feels like “the police state is coming after you”.

• “What scares me the most is that I would be fast asleep at home and I would hear a bang on my door and I’d be taken away in the middle of the night by Ice and nobody will ever know what happened to me.”

• “It feels too risky to speak about LGBTQ+ causes ... or even be seen near a political demonstration.”

In at least some instances, students were identified by anonymous pro-Israel groups like Canary Mission which has created a “deport list.” For example, Rumeysa Ozturk, the Fulbright scholar and PhD student who co-wrote an op-ed in a student newspaper calling on Tufts to divest it’s investments from Israel was profiled on the Canary Mission website.

The Department of Homeland Security memo asking the State Department to revoke her visa used exactly the same language as the website: “OZTURK engaged in anti-Israel activism in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israelis on October 7, 2023.” In other words, it looks like the DHS accusation against Ozturk was copied directly from Canary Mission.

An internal State Department review of her record found no evidence that she had engaged in any illegal action, participated in anti-semitic activities, or expressed support for Hamas. Nevertheless, she was arrested, and is currently in detention, solely on the basis of the op-ed. You can read it here. It calls on Tufts to follow a Senate resolution on divestment. You might disagree with it, but I defy any fair-minded person to argue that it serves as sufficient justification for arrest and revocation of her visa.

The culture of fear extends beyond international students. Universities are running scared, as the federal government threatens to cut off very large federal grants, or subject them to legal investigation or even take over the campus.

It is a good principle that Jewish students should not be attacked or threatened because of their identity. It is also a good principle that the government should not selectively punish people for their speech. The reason we have such principles is that punishments can be abused by unscrupulous governments, which is what we are seeing now. The government does not feel the need to offer persuasive evidence that those they are deporting have attacked Jewish students. It is simply asserting the right that it can revoke people’s legal status for almost any reason, even trivial reasons unrelated to antisemitism.

Destroying Higher Education

Even if you are unmoved by the plight of international students, you should care about the economic and foreign policy consequences. International students generate about forty billion dollars per year, subsidizing American students. They pay a significant tuition premium to come to the United States because our educational system is viewed as the best. They also come because America has looked like a relatively free and open society, one full of opportunity.

But as they are no longer able to get visas, or have to assume a risk arrest and deportation, why invest in America? Interest in studying in the US was already plummeting after Trump’s re-election. How much worse will it get as potential students hear the horror stories about their peers?

Quite apart from the economic considerations, many of the international students who visit go on to be leaders in their home countries. Having those students educated in US institutions is a form of American soft power. But Trump and Rubio are wrecking other forms of soft power, like foreign aid, at record speed. As stories of foreign students expelled from the United States are reported back home, it will further damage our standing in the world.

China is already cautioning students to think twice about coming to America. Without these students, a lot of American universities will face even more severe financial trouble. This is a feature, not a bug, for the Trump administration, who are already trying to kneecap one of America’s most successful industries for ideological reasons, and see the inflow of the world’s talent as a problem to be solved rather than an opportunity to be embraced.

It is not as if the flow of students will stop. Other countries will benefit instead, happy to exploit America’s self-inflicted goal, capturing the revenue and talent that comes from an innovative higher education system. Higher education provided a mechanism by which America persuaded some of the brightest people in the world to come here, and then for the US to retain the best of them. It wis an incredible tool that is being broken.

Consider the story of Kseniia Petrova, the Russian anti-aging scientist who had her visa revoked for not declaring medical samples that her Harvard lab director had asked her to bring into the United States. America used to recruit such brilliant and dedicated scientists. Now, we give them away at the behest of men like Marco Rubio. She is in a jail cell in Louisiana, worried she will be deported back to Russia, where she had protested its authoritarian leader. Harvard has done little to object. She said:

Even immigrants here, they have to have some rights. But it seems that nobody really cares about our rights here…This is not the kind of America I used to know.