The Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign students and faculty who have voiced support for the Palestinian cause has escalated, with universities across the country seeing students either arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or having their visas revoked.
At least eight international students and professors, all of whom have had green cards or student visas, have been targeted by ICE, beginning at Columbia University and proceeding to schools including Georgetown University, Cornell University and the University of Alabama.
That number, however, could be a tiny fraction of the actual count after Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday the State Department has revoked the visas of at least 300 foreign students.
The federal government has pulled out a rarely used law that says the secretary of State can deport a noncitizen who threatens U.S. foreign policy, though only an immigration judge can take away a green card. The use of that obscure law is being challenged in court.
Here are the highest-profile cases among the Trump administration’s crackdown on college campuses:
Mahmoud Khalil
The first and so far most prominent target was Mahmoud Khalil, the lead negotiator of Columbia’s pro-Palestinian encampment who graduated in December.
Khalil, a green card holder, was detained March 8 at an apartment building owned by Columbia.
The government originally argued he threatened the foreign policy of the country, but later added that Khalil did not disclose he worked for certain organizations, such as the United Nations’s Palestinian refugee agency, known as UNWRA, on his application to become a permanent resident.
“The additional charges the government filed last week are completely meritless. They show that the government has no case whatsoever on this bogus charge that his presence in the U.S. would have adverse foreign policy consequences,” said Marc Van Der Hout, whose firm is representing Khalil. “This case is purely about First Amendment protected activity and speech, and U.S. citizens and permanent residents alike are free to say what they wish about what is going on in the world.”
Khalil was transferred to Louisiana, making it difficult for his lawyers to contact him as they try to get him released, as his wife, a U.S. citizen, is set to give birth next month.
A hearing in the case is set for Friday.
Trump has repeatedly cheered Khalil’s arrest as the first “of many to come.”
“If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to comply,” he said on social media.
Alireza Doroudi
University of Alabama doctoral student Alireza Doroudi, who has a student visa, was arrested March 25.
“The University of Alabama recently learned that a doctoral student has been detained off campus by federal immigration authorities. Federal privacy laws limit what can be shared about an individual student,” the university said.
It is not clear what the Iranian national is charged with or where he was taken. It is also unknown if he was part of the pro-Palestinian protests on campus.
“Our fears have come to pass. Donald Trump, Tom Homan and ICE have struck a cold, vicious dagger through the heart of UA’s international community,” the University of Alabama College Democrats said in a statement.
Rumeysa Ozturk
Tufts University Ph.D. candidate Rumeysa Ozturk, a green card holder, was also detained March 25 by ICE, with footage of her plainclothes arrest quickly going viral on social media.
A judge ruled Ozturk, a Turkish national, is to stay in the country for now, and her lawyers say she was taken to Louisiana.
Ozturk was a co-author in an article run by the school newspaper that said Tufts needed to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.”
It is unclear what she is charged with; the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement to multiple outlets that Ozturk was “engaged in activities in support of Hamas,” but did not give details of those actions.
Tufts said it had no prior knowledge the arrest was going to happen.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) was among those who spoke out on the case after footage of it was widely shared. The video showed half a dozen masked agents surround Ozturk on the street, take her phone away as she screamed, handcuff her and usher her into a van.
“The video is really chilling, and this should matter to every single American,” Murphy said.
Yunseo Chung
Yunseo Chung, a green card holder and third-year student at Columbia University, preemptively got a judge to agree to temporarily stop deportation efforts by the Trump administration she found out authorities had a warrant for her arrest.
Chung, who was originally from South Korea and has been in the U.S. since she was 7, sued after she found the administration was trying to revoke her status.
She has been involved in pro-Palestinian protests but was not a leader in the efforts.
She was arrested at protests before, but Columbia exonerated her during disciplinary proceedings.
“Yunseo Chung has engaged in concerning conduct, including when she was arrested by NYPD during a pro-Hamas protest at Barnard College. She is being sought for removal proceedings under the immigration laws. Chung will have an opportunity to present her case before an immigration judge,” a senior Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said.
ICE agents apparently sought Chung at both her family’s home and her dorm. Her attorneys say she is still in the country, though they have declined to specify where.
“ICE’s shocking actions against Ms. Chung form part of a larger pattern of attempted U.S. government repression of constitutionally protected protest activity and other forms of speech. The government’s repression has focused specifically on university students who speak out in solidarity with Palestinians and who are critical of the Israeli government’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza or the pro-Israeli policies of the U.S. government and other U.S. institutions,” her lawsuit filed March 24 reads.
Rasha Alawieh
Rasha Alawieh, an assistant professor from Brown University’s medical school, was deported the weekend of March 15 even after orders were given by a judge to keep her in the country.
Alawieh was deported to Lebanon, with Customs and Border Patrol saying the agents who deported her were not aware of the court order at the time.
“At no time would CBP not take a court order seriously or fail to abide by a court’s order,” court filings from the federal government said.
The deportation came when Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist, was trying to return to the U.S. from a trip to the Middle East, where DHS says she went to the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, “a brutal terrorist who led Hezbollah, responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade terror spree. Alawieh openly admitted to this to CBP officers, as well as her support of Nasrallah.”
Alawieh’s original attorneys withdrew from the case, although they did not say why, and she has since had to acquire a new legal team.
Badar Khan Suri
Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national and postdoctoral scholar at Georgetown University, was arrested by ICE in Arlington, Va., on March 17 and was told his visa was revoked.
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Suri was “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media,” but she offered no further details of his activity.
A spokesperson for Georgetown said the school was “not aware” of any criminal activity by Suri and it has not been given a reason for the detention.
His attorney is arguing Suri is a target due to the Palestinian heritage of his wife, who is a U.S. citizen, as well as his critical views of Israel.
Ranjani Srinivasan
Ranjani Srinivasan, a doctoral student in urban planning at Columbia and an Indian national, had her student visa revoked March 5.
Srinivasan left the country before ICE could detain her in a move DHS has called “self-deporting.”
“The moment Mahmoud got arrested, it sent shockwaves across the Columbia community. He’s a green card holder,” she told Al Jazeera. “That’s when I realized I have no rights in this system at all. It was only a matter of time before they caught hold of me.”
DHS accused her of involvement in “in activities supporting Hamas, a terrorist organization,” with little details on specifics.
“It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America. When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement.
Momodou Taal
Momodou Taal, a Ph.D. student from Cornell University, was asked to surrender to ICE and had his student visa taken away.
Taal has been very active in the pro-Palestinian movement and was suspended from the university last year over his activities. The school ended up reinstating him.
Taal gained notoriety on campus after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, when he posted on the social platform X “colonised peoples have the right to resist by any means necessary” and “Glory to the resistance!”
He later told CNN that “clearly categorically I abhor the killing of all civilians no matter where they are and who does it” but felt it was “racist, Islamophobic that before I’m allowed to have a view on genocide, I have to condemn a terrorist organization.”
Taal filed a lawsuit against the government March 15, a day after his visa was revoked, challenging the executive orders the Trump administration is using to justify the crackdown on foreign students.
“And given how they went after Mahmoud, who has a similar fact pattern, I didn’t want to be a sitting duck for eventually myself or other international students. So, I found the lawsuit as a form of protection seeking national injunction to challenge the constitutionality of these executive orders,” Taal previously told The Hill.
A judge ruled against Taal in that case Thursday, saying the court does not have jurisdiction and the student did not establish “imminent or ongoing threat to their constitutional rights that could be appropriately remedied by the requested restraints. Any future harm alleged in their affidavits appears to be speculative and even moot because of the revocation of Taal’s visa.”
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