Latest news with #MinnesotaStateUniversity
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Feds target 12 Mankato students, universities alert of visa status changes
The Brief Federal authorities have canceled the visa status of 12 students at Minnesota State University, Mankato, the school confirmed. The students are at risk of deportation because they are no longer in the country legally. State universities have pledged to alert students if their status changes and connect them with legal assistance. MANKATO, Minn. (FOX 9) - Federal authorities have canceled the visa status of a dozen students at Minnesota State University, Mankato - a figure that is more than double the number first reported, as state universities have pledged to alert students if their status changes and connect them with legal assistance. What we know Minnesota State University, Mankato confirmed on Monday that a dozen of its students have had their visa status terminated – an action that puts them at risk of deportation. The figure is more than double the number first reported earlier this month, when five students faced a similar predicament. The university said the students' records in a government database used to monitor international students were terminated between March 28 and Monday. At least one of the students was arrested and has since sued the Trump administration. It is unclear whether the other students were arrested. What could happen When a student visa status is terminated, the student is no longer in the country legally, even if they possess a student visa. The removal of their legal status in the system, known as Student and Exchange Visitor Program, or SEVIS, puts them at risk of deportation. In the case of University of Minnesota graduate student Dogukan Gunaydin, the government initiated deportation proceedings days after terminating his legal status. What universities are doing Both the University of Minnesota and Minnesota State University, Mankato, say they will routinely monitor the government database for any changes and alert impacted students. In addition, both universities plan to connect students with legal assistance. What they're saying "The second that your I-20 is terminated, and your record is deleted from the SEVIS system, you no longer have lawful status inside of the country," explained Ana Pottratz Acosta, an immigration attorney. "If you're out of status, you're accumulating unlawful presence. And if you've accumulated more than six months of unlawful presence, and you depart the United States, then you're not able to come back for three years or more than a year. You can't return for 10 years."
Boston Globe
04-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Colleges say the Trump administration is using new tactics to expel international students
Some students have been targeted over pro-Palestinian activism or criminal infractions — or even traffic violations. Others have been left wondering how they ran afoul of the government. At Minnesota State University in Mankato, President Edward Inch told the campus Wednesday that visas had been revoked for five international students for unclear reasons. Advertisement He said school officials learned about the revocations when they ran a status check in a database of international students after the detention of a Turkish student at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The State Department said the detention was related to a drunken driving conviction. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'These are troubling times, and this situation is unlike any we have navigated before,' Inch wrote in a letter to campus. President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to deport foreign students involved in pro-Palestinian protests, and federal agents started by detaining Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card-holder and Palestinian activist who was prominent in protests at Columbia last year. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week students are being targeted for involvement in protests along with others tied to 'potential criminal activity.' Advertisement In the past two weeks, the government apparently has widened its crackdown. Officials from colleges around the country have discovered international students have had their entry visas revoked and, in many cases, their legal residency status terminated by authorities without notice — including students at Arizona State, Cornell, North Carolina State, the University of Oregon, the University of Texas and the University of Colorado. Some of the students are working to leave the country on their own, but students at Tufts and the University of Alabama have been detained by immigration authorities — in the Tufts case, even before the university knew the student's legal status had changed. Feds bypass colleges to move against students In this new wave of enforcement, school officials say the federal government is quietly deleting foreigners' student records instead of going through colleges, as was done in the past. Students are being ordered to leave the country with a suddenness that universities have rarely seen, said Miriam Feldblum, president and CEO of the Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. In the past, when international students have had entry visas revoked, they generally have been allowed to keep legal residency status. They could stay in the country to study, but would need to renew their visa if they left the U.S. and wanted to return. Now, increasing numbers of students are having their legal status terminated, exposing them to the risk of being arrested. 'None of this is regular practice,' Feldblum said. At North Carolina State University, two students from Saudi Arabia left the U.S. after learning their legal status as students was terminated, the university said. N.C. State said it will work with the students to complete their semester from outside the country. Advertisement Philip Vasto, who lived with one of the students, said his roommate, in graduate school for engineering management, was apolitical and did not attend protests against the war in Gaza. When the government told his roommate his student status had been terminated, it did not give a reason, Vasto said. Since returning to Saudi Arabia, Vasto said his former roommate's top concern is getting into another university. 'He's made his peace with it,' he said. 'He doesn't want to allow it to steal his peace any further.' Database checks turn up students in jeopardy At the University of Texas at Austin, staff checking a federal database discovered two people on student visas had their permission to be in the U.S. terminated, a person familiar with the situation said. The person declined to be identified for fear of retaliation. One of the people, from India, had their legal status terminated April 3. The federal system indicated the person had been identified in a criminal records check 'and/or has had their visa revoked.' The other person, from Lebanon, had their legal status terminated March 28 due to a criminal records check, according to the federal database. Both people were graduates remaining in the U.S. on student visas, using an option allowing people to gain professional experience after completing coursework. Both were employed full time and apparently had not violated requirements for pursuing work experience, the person familiar with the situation said. Some students have had visas revoked by the State Department under an obscure law barring noncitizens whose presence could have 'serious adverse foreign policy consequences.' Trump invoked the law in a January order demanding action against campus antisemitism. Advertisement But some students targeted in recent weeks have had no clear link to political activism. Some have been ordered to leave over misdemeanor crimes or traffic infractions, Feldblum said. In some cases, students were targeted for infractions that had been previously reported to the government. Some of the alleged infractions would not have drawn scrutiny in the past and will likely be a test of students' First Amendment rights as cases work their way through court, said Michelle Mittelstadt, director of public affairs at the Migration Policy Institute. 'In some ways, what the administration is doing is really retroactive,' she said. 'Rather than saying, 'This is going to be the standard that we're applying going forward,' they're going back and vetting students based on past expressions or past behavior.' The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities is requesting a meeting with the State Department over the issue. It's unclear whether more visas are being revoked than usual, but officials fear a chilling effect on international exchange. Many of the association's members have recently seen at least one student have their visas revoked, said Bernie Burrola, a vice president at the group. With little information from the government, colleges have been interviewing students or searching social media for a connection to political activism. 'The universities can't seem to find anything that seems to be related to Gaza or social media posts or protests,' Burrola said. 'Some of these are sponsored students by foreign governments, where they specifically are very hesitant to get involved in protests.' There's no clear thread indicating which students are being targeted, but some have been from the Middle East and China, he said. America's universities have long been seen as a top destination for the world's brightest minds — and they've brought important tuition revenue and research breakthroughs to U.S. colleges. But international students also have other options, said Fanta Aw, CEO of NAFSA, an association of international educators. Advertisement 'We should not take for granted that that's just the way things are and will always be,' she said. Associated Press writers Steve Karnowski in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Angeliki Kastanis in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
You can't survive on ramen and Natural Light: Lawmakers confront college food insecurity
A student at the university food pantry makes decisions. College students experience food insecurity at nearly twice the rate of all American households. Photo by Grace Aigner for Minnesota Reformer. While many college students are concerned about scoring a summer internship or scoping out the next good party, fourth-year Minnesota State University student Em Hodge and many people she knows have an entirely different concern: food insecurity. 'I know a lot of students and friends I've worked with don't know where their next meal is coming from,' Hodge said. 'And SNAP could really, really benefit them, but they just make a little too much money,' she said, referring to the federal-state food aid program and its tight eligibility requirement for students. 'Which is just so unfortunate,' said Hodge, a student lobbyist with Students United. Hodge and her fellow students are not alone. College students experience food insecurity at nearly twice the rate of all American households and have been disproportionately underserved by SNAP. More than one in five graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Minnesota said they worried about having enough food until they had money to buy more, the university's 2024 College Student Health Survey found. Now, some Democratic-Farmer-Labor lawmakers hope to make life a little easier for students like Hodge. With the help of Second Harvest Heartland and a university student lobbying group called Students United, the lawmakers want to loosen Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program eligibility requirements to allow more college students to enroll. Sen. Aric Putnam, said current policies don't accurately reflect the needs of today's college students. 'There's a very dismissive presumption that college students can survive off of ramen and Natural Light for four years, and then they'll be fine,' said Putnam, referring to the cheap noodles and beer that have sustained many an undergrad. 'That's not today's college student.' In 2021, Carolyn Litzell was a non-traditional student in her 30s with a full course load, a part-time job and an unpaid internship while paying bills and tuition. Litzell said SNAP was a bureaucratic nightmare. But she relied on it. 'Six or eight times I re-upped my SNAP, every single time it was rejected and then I would have to appeal through a legal process,' Litzell said. 'Now imagine English isn't my first language or I didn't have people who were willing to help me get my paperwork.' To receive benefits, Minnesota college students must meet one federal SNAP eligibility requirement, like working 20 hours a week, having a documented mental or physical disability or caring for a child 11 years old or younger. Litzell said SNAP eligibility requirements are unrealistic for students. 'Every time you got a new job — and when you're a student you get new jobs sometimes three or four times a year — you would have to report,' Litzell said. 'And the reporting process is, not to be conspiratorial, but I think intentionally obtuse.' Indeed, Sophie Wallerstedt, spokesperson for Second Harvest Heartland, said a lack of awareness that students may be eligible and the intimidating SNAP application process contribute to students' underutilization. Putnam and lobbyists from Second Harvest and Students United attempted to expand SNAP eligibility in 2023 with a bill that allowed Minnesota state colleges and the University of Minnesota to designate their institution as a SNAP Employment and Training program, effectively making more students eligible for SNAP. 'These are resources to which people are entitled already, and they are being actively neglected,' Putnam said. The bill passed the Legislature, but was denied by the Biden administration, and the Trump administration is unlikely to change course. Putnam said potential federal spending cuts to programs like SNAP — which congressional Republicans are mulling even as Elon Musk's DOGE takes a chainsaw to the entire government — are worrisome. Wallerstedt, the spokesperson for Second Harvest, said SNAP cuts would mean increasing strain on campus food pantries. Indeed, while a SNAP eligibility expansion remains unsettled, Students United is focused on getting more funding for campus food pantries. The Hunger Free Campus Grant, passed in 2021, funds the organizations. The University of Minnesota, Mankato State University and Macalester College were among the 2024 grant recipients. The Office of Higher Education awarded 24 schools a total of almost $450,000 as part of the Hunger Free Campus grant program in 2024. Michelle Trumpy, director of public health at Boynton Health, said state funding is essential for Nutritious U — the University of Minnesota's food pantry — to purchase and store food. The campus pantry currently serves 1,800 students every month, 400 more students than the previous school year. A bill introduced in the state Senate on March 13 would fund the Hunger Free Campus Grant through 2027. Putnam said the grant provides food and educational resources. 'You don't see the education that travels with (the food) too, because that's not as obvious,' Putnam said. 'The nutrition discussions, the information about different resources that could be available, all of those things are great.' Litzell said visiting Nutritious U was a comfortable experience, which is important for students who might otherwise attach shame to needing the food pantry. 'It was easy to get to, it was easy to get, the line always moved really fast, they were actually super efficient,' Litzell said. 'Getting that amount of food felt good.' Hodge said she wants to see the reliable campus food pantry at Minnesota State expand. 'I've been through some phases where money is tight, so I'll go to the food pantry,' Hodge said. Wallerstedt of Second Harvest Heartland said supplementing SNAP with a visit to a food shelf to get through the lean times is fine as a temporary measure, but it can't be the only game in town. 'It should not have to be the only thing that is available to students,' she said.
