President-elect Donald J. Trump’s anti-immigrant stances and pledges of mass deportation have heightened uncertainty and anxiety among undocumented, international, and first-generation immigrant students and their advocates, as his America First policies again have the potential to affect college campuses.
Trump made immigration a defining issue in his campaign to regain the White House, capitalizing on public concern about migrants at the country’s southern border and promising the “largest deportation operation in American history.”
But Trump’s broad and sometimes bellicose rhetoric has not always clearly distinguished between illegal immigrants and those who are in the country lawfully. He has called for reinstating a ban on travelers, including students and scholars, from a half-dozen predominantly Muslim countries and threatened to revoke the visas of pro-Palestinian student protesters. Project 2025, which many see as a blueprint for the new administration, proposes to deny federal loans to students at colleges or in states that give in-state tuition benefits to undocumented students.
And Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, recently deflected a question about whether the administration would expel undocumented students and other young people currently protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. “We also have to deport people, not just the bad people who came into our country, but people who violated the law coming into this country,” Vance said. “We’ve got to be willing to deport them.”
This get-tough messaging has been applauded by those in favor of stricter immigration measures. “The Trump administration is undoubtedly going to take the rule of law seriously, and foreign nationals should as well,” said Jon Feere, director of investigations at the Center for Immigration Studies, who has written about potential student-visa fraud.
But public comments from incoming leaders could be disconcerting for students as well as for staff and faculty members who are undocumented or on temporary visas. It’s clear from the first Trump administration that rhetoric “can produce chilling effects” even if no policy is ever enacted, said Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration.
For instance, even though during his first term Trump never followed through on threats to limit visas for international students or curtail their ability to work here after graduation, the number of first-time international students tumbled 11 percent. (The calculation excludes 2020, when the pandemic halted travel and visa issuances.)
Still, immigration experts and advocates cautioned against overreacting to the election outcome. “This is really a time for preparation and not panic,” Feldblum said.
Lessons from the Past
Higher-education leaders could be better positioned to respond to anti-immigrant measures because many of them may be familiar from Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2021. That time around, colleges were caught flat-footed by actions such as the travel ban, which was proposed just days after Trump took office.
His advisers have learned from the previous four years what to do policy-wise and how to make it stand up.
At the same time, officials in a second Trump administration may be more assured in pursuing their policy goals. Earlier, inexperience meant that they had to redraft proposals that had rulemaking shortcomings or failed to pass legal muster. It took three different versions of the travel ban before the executive order was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Efforts to roll back the DACA program were blocked. Officials backed off a regulatory change that could have barred international students from the United States for lengthy periods for relatively minor visa infractions.
While some former Trump appointees have become critics, the architect of his immigration and visa policies, Stephen Miller, is expected to return as an adviser.
“We are in a different environment today,” said Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, which supports more open immigration. “His advisers have learned from the previous four years what to do policy-wise and how to make it stand up.”
In addition to reviving previous plans, an emboldened administration could take new, and more far-reaching, steps. Both Trump and Vance have suggested they could end programs that allow people fleeing war or crises in their home countries to live and work in the United States, a group that includes students and scholars seeking refuge.
Trump just can’t round up students and put them on a plane.
There are also questions about the future of DACA, which is the subject of another round of legal challenges after the Biden administration issued a new rule to try to strengthen the program. Under Biden, the federal government has defended the program, but a Trump administration may not.
The administration could use its powers to shape state policy on these issues, such as blocking states that give financial support to undocumented students from qualifying for federal student aid. Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia currently provide in-state tuition to undocumented students and 19 also provide access to state financial aid.
The federal government could challenge other state-level policies friendly to immigrant students, like legislation passed this year in California to allow undocumented students to work on public-college campuses. As a senator, Vance introduced a bill to block such hiring. The California measure was ultimately vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, who said it could expose students and their families to deportation and other legal risks.
Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of law at Cornell University who specializes in immigration law, said that while it is important to take Trump’s stances seriously, “there’s a big difference between rhetoric and due process.”
People who are to be deported are first entitled to immigration hearings — and, according to Yale-Loehr, there’s a current backlog of 3.6 million cases. “Trump just can’t round up students and put them on a plane,” he said. Those protections should allay international and immigrant students’ fears.
Conditional Status
Still, their legal status can be conditional: Cornell, for instance, recently moved to terminate a graduate student’s visa after he was suspended for his part in pro-Palestinian protests. While foreign students have the same free-speech rights as their American classmates, their visa status can be affected if they are arrested or convicted, or if they are suspended for violating college policies and so are not studying full time. (Cornell later allowed the student to remain enrolled.)
Meanwhile, only about a third of the 408,000 undocumented students enrolled at American colleges have or are eligible for the legal protections of DACA.
Yale-Loehr said college legal clinics could be a resource for concerned students. A project run by Cornell has, since the beginning of the year, counseled nearly 700 DACA recipients, 60 percent of whom were identified as having a path to a skilled-work visa or other status.
Queens College, part of the City University of New York, also offers free immigrant legal services to students and their families, regardless of immigration status. It was intentionally located on the first floor of the student union to send a clear message of support to Queens students, two-thirds of whom were born abroad or are first-generation immigrants, said Frank H. Wu, the college’s president.
Despite the darkening policy picture, Wu is trying to reassure students that they still have advocates. “Queens is the world’s borough, and we’re the public college for the world’s borough,” Wu said. “I want them to know I have their backs.”
