The Trump administration in January promised to revoke visas from international students who rallied in pro-Palestinian protests. Now, the administration is putting that plan into action — in ways legal experts say stretch the bounds of the law.
Among Trump’s latest targets is Momodou Taal, a doctoral student at Cornell University. On Friday, news broke that the government had revoked Taal’s visa and asked him to turn himself into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. The move came after Taal filed a lawsuit challenging two executive orders that he and others argue prevent noncitizens from expressing “hostile attitudes” about the United States.
Taal was twice suspended by the institution last year during a surge of Gaza activism. One of those suspensions, stemming from a September disruption of a campus job fair, put Taal’s visa in jeopardy, he said at the time. Cornell ultimately allowed Taal to continue his studies. On Sunday, Taal wrote on X that he was safe and awaiting his day in court.
But for Taal and other students and scholars who’ve lost visas, legal cases might prove difficult because of the federal government’s subjective power to make calls about what, and who, constitutes a national security threat.
The State Department has broad authority to revoke visas for students or professors. ICE officers, who are part of Homeland Security, handle arrests and detentions. Customs and Border Protection agents, also part of Homeland Security, can deny entry to a visa holder who has been traveling, even if that person is living in the country or has entered before, experts said.
“When someone is a noncitizen, every time they try to come back into the United States, they run the risk of not being allowed back,” said Alberto M. Benítez, a professor of clinical law at George Washington University.
What’s less cut-and-dry is whether a person is required to leave the United States immediately after their visa is terminated. Even if a visa is canceled or expires, a person might still have legal status to remain in the country.
The federal government has targeted pro-Palestinian activists before: A 1987 deportation case against two international pro-Palestinian activists, part of a group known as the Los Angeles Eight, dragged on for 20 years. In 2007, a judge decided that the men were not a danger to the country and would not be deported.
The Immigration and Nationality Act has allowed the government to revoke nonimmigrant visas since the 1950s. Until recently, its application in higher education has been sparse. That means new precedents could soon be set, with major implications — not just for international students but also for college enrollment and academic research.
Nonimmigrant Visas
Most students, faculty, and researchers from abroad come to the United States under nonimmigrant visas, which strictly allow them to work or study. If they participate in “unauthorized activities,” they could be “subject to removal or other measures,” according to the State Department. That rule gives the government discretion to decide which activities are not allowed.
When any kind of agency is evaluating whether or not to either accord, or continue, or revoke a visa, they don’t really need a very strong reason.
For that reason, nonimmigrant visas are “very fragile,” said Amelia Wilson, an assistant professor of law and director of the Immigration Justice Clinic at Pace University.
“When any kind of agency is evaluating whether or not to either accord, or continue, or revoke a visa, they don’t really need a very strong reason,” Wilson said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in social-media posts and media appearances that participating in pro-Palestinian protests — which he called “pro-terror riots” in a post on X — is cause enough to revoke a nonimmigrant visa.
His department, along with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), have started acting on that idea.
Last week, in addition to demanding that Taal turn himself in, ICE agents arrested a Georgetown University postdoctoral researcher for “spreading Hamas propaganda,” a DHS spokesperson wrote on X. The researcher, Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national, is being held at a detention facility in Texas. A judge has temporarily blocked his deportation.
Suri’s behavior on social media “rendered him deportable” under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the DHS spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, wrote. McLaughlin did not respond to a request for comment about the exact nature of Suri’s social-media posts, but the BBC reported that Suri’s father-in-law was an adviser to Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that carried out the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
In another case, a medical professor at Brown University, Rasha Alawieh, was turned away at a Boston airport after returning from a visit to Lebanon, despite holding a valid work visa. DHS’s McLaughlin said on X that Alawieh “openly admitted” to customs agents that she had attended the funeral of a prominent Hezbollah figure during her trip and that denying her entry was “commonsense security.”
(Legal permanent residents, who hold green cards, have far more protections against deportation, legal experts added. In the high-profile arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student and legal permanent resident, immigration agents said that his green card had been canceled. But Khalil has a stronger case, experts said.)
The March 15 lawsuit filed by Taal, along with another Cornell student and a professor, alleges that the Trump administration’s targeting of international students and scholars violates their First Amendment rights to free speech.
Visa holders have the right to participate in political speech, said Emily R. Chertoff, an associate professor of law at Georgetown University. But the line between free speech and illegal activity is blurred, she said, and largely at the government’s discretion.
“Most lawyers, I think, who do this work, think that it (protest) is, for some, protected activity,” Chertoff said. “But just because it is, doesn’t mean that you can guarantee yourself that you’re going to be protected.”
Visa vs. Status
One less-settled question among legal experts is whether international students and scholars must leave the country after their visas are revoked — and whether they can be forcibly removed.
Legal status, which provides a window during which people can remain in the country, is different from a visa, which allows them to enter the country, said Mahsa Khanbabai, an immigration lawyer based in Massachusetts.
When a student or scholar comes to the United States to study or teach, their legal status is provided by a university, Khanbabai said, and it’s therefore at the university’s discretion to reverse a person’s status. Homeland Security also has status-canceling powers, though it rarely uses them.
“If the student has a valid I-20 (status) and is upholding their end of meeting all of the requirements of being a valid student,” Khanbabai said, “then they’re still in valid status in the U.S. and cannot be deported just because the visa has expired or has been revoked.”
Though visa and status are different, Wilson, the Pace law professor, said that when a visa is revoked, legal status is implicated, too. The two terms seem more intricately tied recently, as the Trump administration is employing little-used interpretations of the law in cases against students and scholars.
Visa and status were revoked just days apart in the case of Ranjani Srinivasan, a Columbia doctoral student who received notice this month that her documents were canceled.
Srinivasan was arrested at Columbia during an escalation of Gaza protests a year ago; she has said that she got caught in the protest while walking home, according to The New York Times, and her case was dismissed without a criminal record.
They’re trying to sloppily fast-track these removals, in certain cases even before a judge can weigh in.
When Srinivasan’s visa was revoked, her status and her enrollment at Columbia were also canceled just days later, according to an Instagram post written by Srinivasan. After receiving notice that her status was terminated, Srinivasan decided to leave the United States and go to Canada. (Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has claimed that Srinivasan “self-deported,” meaning she left the country before she was forced out. Srinivasan’s lawyers say that’s inaccurate.)
Deporting a student without first giving them a hearing in court is illegal in most cases, said Adam S. Cohen, an immigration lawyer based in Memphis.
Immigration courts are severely backlogged, he added, which might be contributing to the Trump administration’s attempts to speed up student-protest cases.
“They’re trying to sloppily fast-track these removals, in certain cases even before a judge can weigh in,” Cohen said.
Still, even if students and scholars have legitimate due-process claims, many colleges are advising them not to travel. Brown officials told international students and staff not to leave the country “out of an abundance of caution” after Alawieh, the Brown medical professor, was denied re-entry.
“People have to evaluate their own sense of, ‘What risks do I want to take? How important is it to me to be able to remain in the U.S.?’” said Chertoff, the Georgetown law professor. “But they should understand that it’s an environment of significantly high risk.”
