UPDATE: As of April 24, 2025, over 280 colleges and universities have identified 1,800-plus international students and recent graduates who have had their legal status changed by the State Department. There are many international students not being able to go to Universities and facing problems with ICE.
The Trump Administration’s push to deport migrants living in the US has only expanded as he finishes his first 100 days in office, and student visa programs have not escaped their notice. According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, around 300 international students had their student visas revoked as of March 27. This has included Rumeysa Ozturk, a Fulbright scholar from Türkiye who was detained after attending a Ramadan celebration at Tufts University; Indian Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown adjunct professor whose American wife is politically active; and Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian refugee who led a pro-Palestinian group at Columbia University.
On April 16, the administration tried to push further against speech they didn’t like. DHS canceled $2.7 million in grants going to Harvard, even threatening to terminate the student and visitor exchange program certification, which wouldn’t allow any international students to go and attend Harvard University.
Additionally, the US government has frozen more than $2 billion in funding for Harvard University. Harvard, a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Last year, Harvard’s operating budget was around $685 million.
These DHS (Department of Homeland Security) threats came shortly after Harvard rebuffed the Trump administration’s demands to overhaul the governance, admissions, and hiring processes. Although the Trump administration has opened a civil rights investigation into Harvard, that inquiry remains in process.
The DHS also demands that the university provide a detailed record on Harvard’s foreign student visa holders of illegal and violent activities by April 30, or they will lose their SEVP certification. This demand comes as the federal government revokes the visas for international students across the U.S.
From last year, up to this year, (2024-2025), there were about 6,793 international students that attended Harvard, making up 27.2% of the university’s enrollment, according to instructional data.
Following the condemnation of federal interference attempts, Trump had ratcheted up his criticism of the university online. Trump said that Harvard can no longer be considered a decent place of learning, saying things like how Harvard is a joke that teaches hate and stupidity and they should no longer receive any federal funds.
On Harvard’s Campus Services, over the past few days, there were three students and two recent graduates that have had their student visas revoked. Harvard learned of the revocations during a rounding records review. They notified students of the revocations and had referred them to legal assistance.
On Monday, April 21, Harvard filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing the freeze on research funding is unconstitutional and flatly unlawful. Harvard is calling on the court to restore more than $2.2 billion in research dollars.
The filing in this district court in Boston requests that the court vacate and set aside the funding freeze so as to allow previously approved funding to flow and halt the administration’s efforts to freeze current or deny any future funding without engaging in procedures contained in federal law.
