After immigration crackdown, international students in Texas self-censor to protect their education

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The fear on Texas college campuses spread fast after the Trump administration abruptly revoked the legal status and visas of more than 250 international students.

Even foreign-born students who weren’t identified for removal began worrying about getting on the radar of a White House that has fervently sought to supercharge the nation’s deportation apparatus.

They canceled summer trips home. They stopped venturing out of their homes alone. They deleted social media accounts.

The Trump administration originally said its nationwide reclassification of international students was aimed at those who led pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year or had committed serious crimes while in the U.S. But in legal challenges filed across the country, lawyers for affected students argued their clients had not protested and that some had only been previously charged with minor offenses, like traffic infractions. Federal authorities restored many students’ legal status late last month — but also said they would develop a new policy to pursue future revocations.

The sudden revocations, the opaque method to determine whose status was altered, the whiplash reversal and the promise of a new policy have sowed worry and confusion among students.

"When you create that kind of hostile environment, it makes it difficult for us to carry on with our normal life and complete our education because so much time is spent talking about it, like talking to a lawyer, hearing about the complications,” said a University of Houston doctoral student from South Asia. “It creates an environment of anxiety and fear."

He was one of four international students who spoke to The Texas Tribune on the condition of anonymity because they fear any misstep, including talking publicly about their experience, could spur the federal government to target them for removal, even though they have permission to be in the U.S.

Immigration attorneys are advising international students to keep their heads down. But higher education experts worry the tumult could hinder efforts to recruit and retain international students, who contribute to the state’s economy and often support the research efforts of its universities.

Last year, Texas universities enrolled more than 89,000 international students, the third most of any state, according to Open Doors, an organization that conducts an annual census of international students in the country and is sponsored by the federal government. More than half come from either India or China to pursue a STEM degree.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in March that the administration has the right to revoke visas of students who helped bring college campuses to a standstill during the pro-Palestinian protests.

“We’re going to err on the side of caution. We are not going to be importing activists into the United States,” he said. “I think it’s lunacy to continue to allow that.”

Rubio later said expressing approval of or supporting a terrorist group like Hamas, or encouraging others to, is grounds for a visa revocation.

Immigration attorneys say the sudden revocations violated international students’ due process protections and fit the Trump administration’s pattern of taking enforcement action on sometimes unsustained accusations.

“Everything that we have seen come out of this administration, whether it be DOGE, whether it be mislabeling people as gang members, or whether it be this iteration, everything they do is just done with a big sledgehammer and there are so many errors,” said Kristin Etter, director of policy and legal resources at the Texas Immigration Law Council.

Dreams and fears

One of the most high-profile instances of federal authorities targeting an international student came in March when plain-clothes Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents detained a Tufts University student from Turkey, which was captured on video that went viral. Rümeysa Öztürk’s detention came after she wrote an op-ed for the student newspaper criticizing Tufts’ response to the campus pro-Palestinian movement. She remains in detention.

The University of Houston student who spoke to the Tribune said some of his peers stopped going places alone or without first notifying someone after seeing the video. They feared ICE could pick them up — perhaps on an accusation they had broken a law they didn’t know existed — and that no one would know what happened to them, he said.

“It might sound to an outside person unnecessary, but the situation is that when you see people getting abducted on the street, when you see those videos online, you are like, ‘am I going to have the same kind of encounter?’ It is an actual fear because they are seeing how arbitrary enforcement has been,” he said.

He canceled plans to visit family in his home country this summer out of fear that he might not be able to reenter the U.S.

So did an undergraduate student at the University of Texas at Arlington, who has not seen his family since leaving Pakistan to study in the U.S. in 2023. He said he is prepared not to see them until after he graduates in a few years because he believes a degree from a U.S. institution will lead to a better and well-paid job.

He chose to study in Texas in part because he heard it was a conservative state where people minded their business, but also spoke their minds. But now, he’s careful with what he says and warns other international students to do the same.

“There’s actually some advice that I would like to mention for other international students: Stay away from political matters. Unless you’re a political science major, you came here for an education. Take and make something out of it,” he said.

He also decided not to join UT-Arlington’s Muslim Student Association because he thought doing so could lead the federal government to associate him with the pro-Palestinian protests, though he said he hasn’t participated in them. The student said he was never very religious, but he wanted to join the association to get more in touch with his culture and meet new people like him while he was away from home.

“I’m fine with it,” he said of canceling his flight home and not joining the association. “I came here for an education and that’s all I want.”

A doctoral candidate from Taiwan studying at the University of Texas at Austin said he doesn’t feel like he did anything wrong when he peacefully participated in several of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that took place on campus last year. Police did not detain or arrest him.

He said he felt compelled to advocate for Palestinians because he empathized with them as a citizen of Taiwan, a country with its own long-standing territorial disputes with China.

He will go back to his home country in July, where he will complete his Ph.D. He said he’ll leave with the impression that it’s better to study at universities in Taiwan, which he said do not permit police to come onto campuses.

“I feel like America is not really a free country, but one with more potential for threats and chaos,” he said.

Navigating a precarious moment

The Department of Homeland Security announced in April that it would begin screening international students’ social media for antisemitic content as grounds for revoking their legal status. DHS officials said the students could no longer “hide behind the First Amendment.”

“There is no room in the United States for the rest of the world’s terrorist sympathizers, and we are under no obligation to admit them or let them stay here,” DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said.

Protests erupted on college campuses throughout the country after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Students who participated in them have said they were protesting Israel’s response to the attack and calling on their universities to divest from manufacturers supplying that country with weapons.

But the Trump administration has said the protests led to an increase in antisemitism on campuses. It accused universities of failing to protect Jewish students from antisemitism, which it says has taken the form of everything from denying them access to class to physical threats and assaults. The administration assembled a multi-agency task force to investigate universities where large protests took place.

“The task force will not allow these so-called ‘protesters’ to disrupt campus life and deprive students, especially Jewish students who live in fear on campus, of their equal opportunity protections and civil rights,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said after one such investigation was launched this week at the University of Washington.

The Diaspora Alliance, a group that fights antisemitism and its instrumentalization, has accused the Trump administration of justifying repressive policies, like targeting campus activists protesting the Israel-Hamas war, by conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Its actions have ignored antisemitic behavior from the far right and risk blowback to Jews, the organization says.

Immigration attorneys said they have advised international students to get off social media because their posts could be misconstrued or distorted.

The Texas Immigration Law Council held a know-your-rights webinar for international students on Zoom. Within minutes of starting, the lawyers on the call had 500 scared students hanging onto their every word.

The one question they asked over and over again was: “If I haven’t done anything wrong, could my visa still be revoked?” The answer was “yes.”

“It’s hard,” Attorney Faye Kolly said. “They have constitutional rights, but those can put them in jeopardy right now. We want these students to remain safe and outside the ire of this government.”

The federal government can revoke legal statuses and visas at its discretion, but has historically only revoked student visas in extreme circumstances, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Kolly said it is unusual for the federal government to target international students citing national security or foreign policy concerns.

Due process protections for international students are limited, attorneys said. Students whose status was revoked do not get to hear the specific reasons why or get an opportunity to respond to them. They can request their legal status be reinstated, but the government’s decision is not subject to judicial review. However, attorneys have recently sued the government alleging it is not following its own rules for revoking status.

Visa revocations are not subject to judicial review either, unless DHS initiates deportation proceedings in immigration court. Only at that point is the student entitled to representation, at their own expense, and given a chance to challenge the government’s evidence.

International students already go through a meticulous background check before being allowed to come to the U.S. They also have to demonstrate they can afford to live here and must agree to leave within 60 days of completing their studies.

The UH student remembered showing U.S. consular officers every social media account he had ever made when asked.

“Anyone who has applied for a U.S. visa from a country, especially a third-world country, knows how difficult it is and how rigorous the process is,” he said.

Risk to Texas

International students generated $2.5 billion for Texas’ economy and supported more than 22,000 jobs last year, according to NAFSA: Association of International Educators.

Some higher education experts are worried the current political uncertainty has already discouraged some students from other parts of the world from wanting to come to the U.S., putting the country’s schools at a disadvantage when competing for talented students abroad.

Sarah Speitzer with the American Council on Education said Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia have recently been the U.S.’ biggest competitors for international students, but China and France are also trying to attract more.

That comes at a time when universities are facing other financial headwinds.

Nationally, the Trump administration is trying to limit how much money from federal grants can be spent on overhead for biomedical research, which could cost Texas universities hundreds of millions of dollars.

In Texas, state leaders have not allowed universities to raise tuition for undergraduate students for years. And state lawmakers have made continuous threats to cut state universities’ funding over perceived violations of the Texas ban on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Losing international students could make things more financially precarious, Speitzer said.

“That could have an enormous economic impact on our institutions,” she said.

Several universities reached by the Tribune — including UH, Texas A&M University, UT-Austin, UT-Arlington, UT-Dallas, Texas Tech University and Texas State University — declined to share examples of how they are supporting international students during this time or did not respond. The University of North Texas said faculty who instruct the impacted students may allow them to submit coursework or take tests electronically.

Ravi Prakash, who was an international student before becoming a professor of computer science at the UT-Dallas, said most international students in the U.S. are graduate students who pay out-of-state tuition, which is two to three times more expensive than in-state tuition.

He said international students also play an integral part in a university’s research efforts. Many of the students who helped him research ways to improve wireless internet access came from outside the U.S., for example.

“America embraced me as an immigrant and I feel like things are changing now,” Prakash said.

Texas has 16 top-tier research universities that attract and benefit from international students. An international student from South America told the Tribune he saved up $30,000 to study at Texas A&M University, which enrolls more than 6,000 international students.

He said many international students in the engineering department are now worried that companies won’t hire them to do optional practical training, a kind of temporary job in students’ field of study they can apply for after they graduate. He said he’s fortunate to be graduating and starting his optional practical training soon.

Prakash at UT-Dallas said many international graduate students count on those jobs to pay off the tens of thousands of dollars in student loans they take out.

The A&M student said international students have also stopped talking with each other about current events to protect the investment they’ve made in their education.

“The last thing that I want to be is involved in a political discussion that is not related to me,” he said.

The UH student said he wanted to do his Ph.D. in Texas in 2021 because he wanted to learn from a UH faculty member he admired. He said he believed he could speak freely and do research without political interference in America. The administration’s actions have shattered those beliefs, he said.

“Honestly, if someone asked me if they should come to the U.S. now, my answer would be no,” he said.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Disclosure: Texas A&M University, University of Texas - Arlington, University of Texas - Dallas, University of Texas at Austin and University of Houston have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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