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On March 8, Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the lobby of his university-owned apartment. He was then taken to Louisiana and faced deportation for taking part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. A few weeks later, Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was one of four students who wrote a guest op-ed in The Tufts Daily last March about the university’s ties to Israel and response to the war in Gaza, was arrested by ICE agents in unidentifiable clothes and taken to a facility in Louisiana.
Then, as students began disappearing across the country, a confirmed total of 38 Colorado students have had their visas revoked, including 16 confirmed students at Colorado State University and 12 confirmed University of Colorado students across three CU campuses. Several of these students have filed lawsuits.
Now students are being stripped of their F-1 and J-1 visa statuses — which allow them to study in the country — and face deportation in at least 30 states.
Their crime? They thought their freedom of speech and right to protest would be protected on college campuses in the U.S. and their peers who protested beside them would, too.
Last year, Öztürk and three fellow students wrote in The Tufts Daily, “Credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide.”
This exercise in expression had consequences for Öztürk. But I can freely express today, in The Collegian or on my college campus, my desire for a free Palestine.
This is because the Trump administration is using the Immigration and Nationality Act, enacted in 1952, as a legal framework to justify these visa revocations and deportations.
This allows removal if someone causes “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States,” at the discretion of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has almost complete control over the interpretation of the vague definition.
“If we choose silence now, we are choosing complicity in a system that punishes people for thinking, speaking and existing.”
A large majority of students being targeted are ones who have expressed support for Palestinians, participated in protests or simply originated from African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has even said that law enforcement uses intelligence gathered by the Department of Homeland Security to identify these international students for arrest — and that is insane.
This isn’t just an attack on students, however. Professors, researchers and entire academic institutions are also being targeted. Along with the revocation of student visas, the Trump administration has threatened to withhold funding from Columbia University if the school doesn’t comply with its demands.
Columbia — with a notorious pattern of being the fucking worst — agreed to the Trump administration’s demands in order to maintain the school’s federal funding.
Either way, Trump is doing what he wants: spreading propaganda in education and mitigating opposition. Starting with the most vulnerable, he wants to change perceptions of U.S. history, values and beliefs.
Notice how I said, “starting with the most vulnerable.” While it may be federal workers, immigrants and students now, most everyone will eventually feel the effects of Trump’s decision making.
We already have Trump saying that “homegrowns” will be the next group of people sent to prisons abroad. This is at the same time that a physician from Connecticut, who was born in the United States, received an email from the Department of Homeland Security advising her to “self-deport.” The Trump administration is also currently ignoring a Supreme Court order to return a wrongly deported man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
The line between who is a criminal and who is an inconvenience to those in power is already nonexistent.
If we choose silence now, we are choosing complicity in a system that punishes people for thinking, speaking and existing. These students are not criminals. They are scholars, activists, neighbors and friends — people who believe that justice and education can exist together.
For those affected, you are not only a valued member of our community but always a member of our community.
For official help, it is recommended that international students contact the Office of International Programs at isss@colostate.edu and continue to monitor the international updates page.
Reach Caden Proulx at letters@collegian.com or on social media @CSUCollegian.
