Hundreds of international students in the US are waking up to the harsh reality of living under the Trump government as the US Department of State (DOS) sent email to students who have participated in pro-Palestine protests to self deport.
Students who 'shared' or 'liked' 'anti-national' (read: pro-Palestine) posts are also the target of these mails, a report quoting an immigration attorney said.
According to the latest Open Doors report, there are 1.5 million student visa holders in the US of which 3.31 lakh are Indian students and 2.77 are from China.
The crackdown is based on social media reviews being conducted by DOS. Thus, even new student applications be it for an F (academic study visa), M (vocational study visa), or J (exchange visa) will also come under social media scrutiny, Times of India reported.
Earlier, quoting a senior Justice and State Department officials, Axios reported that the Trump administration is discussing plans to try to block certain colleges from having any foreign students if it decides too many are "pro-Hamas."
The idea of prohibiting colleges from enrolling any student visa-holders grew out of Secretary of State Marco Rubio's "Catch and Revoke" program, which now is focusing on students who protested against the war in Gaza, the Axios report said.
More than 300 foreign students have had their student visas revoked in the three weeks "Catch and Revoke" has been in operation, the official said.
Critics accuse the administration of trampling free speech and due process rights, and of unfairly conflating support for Palestinian rights with backing Hamas, the terror group that rules Gaza.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a nonpartisan free-speech group, said the concept of decertifying entire universities based on who is "pro-Hamas" is "a worrying escalation."
This kind of explicitly viewpoint-driven decision-making is ripe for abuse and risks arbitrary enforcement," FIRE legal director Will Creeley told Axios in a statement.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday the State Department may have revoked more than 300 visas and warned that the Trump administration was looking every day for "these lunatics" after Washington this week detained and revoked the visa of a Turkish student at Tufts University, Reuters reported
According to the report, Rubio's comments were in response to a question about Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish student who was detained on Tuesday evening in Somerville, Massachusetts, outside of Boston, by masked and plainclothes agents. Her detention was the latest Trump administration action against a foreign student who had voiced support for Palestinians in Israel's war in Gaza.
