International students in the US worry even as Trump temporarily restores some legal statuses

Straits Times

27-04-2025

Demonstrators hold a banner during a 'Stand Up for Internationals' rally on the campus of Berkeley University in Berkeley, California, on April 17. PHOTO: REUTERS
International students in the US worry even as Trump temporarily restores some legal statuses
WASHINGTON - When Karl Molden, a sophomore at Harvard University from Vienna, learnt that the Trump administration had abruptly restored thousands of international students' ability to legally study in the United States, he said he did not feel reassured.
After all, immigration officials have insisted that they could still terminate students' legal status, even in the face of legal challenges, and the administration has characterised the matter as only a temporary reprieve.
'They shouldn't tempt us into thinking that the administration will stop harassing us,' he said. 'They will try to find other ways.'
He is not alone in his worry.
April 25's dramatic shift from the administration came after scores of international students filed lawsuits saying their legal right to study in the United States had been rescinded, often with minimal explanation. In some cases, students had minor traffic violations or other infractions. In others, there appeared to be no obvious reason for the revocations.
After learning that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had deleted their records from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS, many students sued to try to save their status. That prompted a flurry of emergency orders by judges that blocked the changes.
Students and their immigration lawyers said April 26 that they were relieved for the temporary reprieve, but emphasised that it was just that – temporary.
Their sense of uncertainty was rooted in what Mr Joseph F. Carilli, a Justice Department lawyer, told a federal judge on April 25. He said immigration officials had begun working on a new system for reviewing and terminating the records of international students and academics studying in the United States.
Until the process was complete, he said, student records that had been purged from a federal database in recent weeks would be restored, along with the students' legal status.
'This is a Band-Aid, but it's not yet a successful surgery,' said Mr Clay Greenberg, an immigration lawyer in New York who is representing several affected students. 'The question that remains now is: Well, what is the new policy going to be?'
In the meantime, students have been left with the same anxieties as before, which began when the administration moved to cancel more than 1,500 student visas in recent weeks.
Mr Kevin Zhang, a third-year law student at Columbia University from China, said virtually every Chinese student he knows is concerned about their visa status. People in the Chinese community on campus, he added, often exchange information about US and Chinese policies, trying to determine how it could affect them.
'It's a very unstable and turbulent period,' said Mr Zhang, 30.
Mr Leo Gerden, 22, a senior at Harvard from Sweden, described the Trump administration's decision to reverse its international student visa revocations as 'great news' but noted that the federal government is still demanding that Harvard turn over detailed information about its student body.
Mr Gerden, who studies economics and political science, has led rallies on Harvard's campus to protest the administration's efforts to target international students. Now, because of that activism, he said he feared he was a target.
'I have sort of accepted that being at commencement is not a guarantee anymore,' he said. 'I'm definitely worried, but it is a risk that I've accepted because I think that what we're fighting for here is just so much bigger than any one individual.'
Recently, his high school guidance counselor asked him for advice because several Swedish students had been accepted to the University of Notre Dame and Georgetown University, but they were now wary of moving to the United States, a sentiment that once felt almost inconceivable.
'The US has always been the top dream for many people, and especially for me,' he said. 'The entire college life and all the opportunities that come with studying at a university here has put US universities in a very special position that is now being taken away.'
Evan Mr Sulpizio Estrada, 20, a Tufts University sophomore from San Diego, said his friends who were international students had in recent weeks expressed fear about their situation.
After the arrest of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts doctoral student from Turkey, many international students at the school stopped attending classes or eating in the cafeteria because they were afraid of being arrested, Mr Sulpizio Estrada said. Still, he added, many of them were trying their best to continue living normal college lives.
Mr Louie Yang, 18, a Tufts freshman from Beijing, said that although some of his friends had expressed concerns about visa revocations, he had tried to not let politics distract from his academics.
'I'm not so worried about it,' he said.
Mr Greenberg said he believed the situation exemplified 'the unpredictability and chaos' coming from the Trump administration.
In recent weeks, he said he has continued to be flooded with similar questions from international students: 'Should I leave? Am I going to be arrested if I don't leave tomorrow?' NYTIMES
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