Candidates, elected officials threaten to revoke visas of student protesters
With tensions running high on college campuses over the war in the Middle East, Donald J. Trump and several other Republican presidential candidates have called for deporting international students who express support for Palestinians or criticize the Israeli government’s military response in Gaza.
Such actions would violate the students’ free-speech rights, experts said. The candidates’ comments have once again thrust foreign students into the molten-hot center of American politics.
Several Republican senators have similarly called for federal officials to revoke the visas of students who express support for Hamas, the Palestinian group that carried out the October 7 attacks on Israeli civilians.
In a speech in Iowa last week, Trump, the former president and current Republican front-runner, called for deporting visa holders with “jihadist sympathies,” and singled out international students.
“In the wake of the attacks on Israel, Americans have been disgusted to see the open support for terrorists among the legions of foreign nationals on college campuses. They’re teaching your children hate,” he said. “Under the Trump administration, we will revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities, and we will send them straight back home.”
While the bloodshed in Gaza and Israel has exposed deep divisions on college campuses, it’s not clear that international students have been prominent protest organizers or activists.
Trump also called for imposing ideological screenings on foreign visitors to the United States and said, if reelected, he would reinstate his ban on travelers from a number of predominantly Muslim countries.
The travel ban, issued less than a week into Trump’s presidency, in 2017, was the first, but not the last, policy move during the Trump administration to affect international students, with some efforts targeting them directly. Under Trump’s watch, student-visa rules were tightened, and he considered a proposal to bar all Chinese students, whom he allegedly called “spies,” from American campuses. During the height of the pandemic, his administration tried to force international students to enroll in in-person courses or leave the country, although officials backed down after public opposition.
But in the current climate, Trump is not alone in saying he would rescind the visas of students who support Hamas, which the U.S. government has designated as a terrorist group. Gov. Ron DeSantis, of Florida, a frequent critic of higher education, has made the issue a talking point in speeches and media appearances.
On “The Megyn Kelly Show,” DeSantis said that “any of those students who are here on visas, those visas should be canceled, and they should be repatriated back to their home country. That’s a no-brainer.” He told a Fox News interviewer, “You don’t have a right to be here on a visa. You don’t have a right to be studying in the United States.”
Another presidential hopeful, Sen. Tim Scott, of South Carolina, expressed a similar view of protesters: “If any of those students on college campuses are foreign nationals on a visa, they should be sent back to their country.”
Nor are calls to expel international students limited to the campaign trail. In the Senate, Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, said he would introduce a resolution calling for President Biden to revoke the visas of any foreign nationals who back Hamas. In a letter to Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of homeland security, Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican of Arkansas, urged the U.S. government “to immediately deport any foreign national — including and especially any alien on a student visa — that has expressed support for Hamas and its murderous attacks on Israel.”
Republican politicians’ focus on international students has alarmed both educators and free-speech advocates. Not only have some of the statements been overly broad — not differentiating between criticism of Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Gaza, which have killed Palestinian civilians, and support for Hamas’s attacks — but they would punish international students simply for speaking out.
That would violate their First Amendment rights, said Sarah McLaughlin, a senior scholar for global expression at the free-speech group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE. Student-visa holders and others legally in the United States have the same free-speech protections as Americans do under court rulings, McLaughlin said.
She fears that threats of retaliatory expulsions could have a chilling effect on international students’ speech. Many students from overseas have an imperfect understanding of American law, and they may be wary of taking part in any activities that they fear could jeopardize their visa status. (While violations of the law, such as drunk driving, can run afoul of visa rules, peaceful protest does not.)
What’s more, some foreign students may be hesitant to express their views because of surveillance and censorship by their home governments, even while abroad. “For international students, they can feel like they can’t win either way — they’re subject to more scrutiny at home and now here,” McLauglin said. “It’s concerning.”
She said American colleges should do more to educate international students about free-speech law.
Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, said right now college officials should be checking in with their international students to show their support.
Feldblum, whose nonprofit group advocates for international, immigrant, and refugee students, said she was disturbed that foreign students were being thrust into a hot-button debate that may have little to do with them. “My immediate response was dismay and disappointment that international students are once again being politicized.”
She noted that some of the elected officials who have spoken out have previously favored restrictions on international students or on immigration more broadly.
Fanta Aw, executive director of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, said colleges have mechanisms in place if student behavior violates their institutional policies. “Revoking student visas on the basis of speech alone would be a dangerous overreaction that can only serve to jeopardize the legal protections afforded by the First Amendment, perpetuate inaccurate portrayals of international students, and confound public and private diplomacy,” she said. “International students have been a scapegoat for anti-immigrant xenophobia before, and this is another shameful example.
Feldblum said she was concerned about what overseas students will learn from this latest clash. “International students should not fear for their status if they speak out against one side or another — in fact, that is one of the important lessons about the power of democracy and free speech that we want to share with international students on our campuses.”
