Trump Administration Revoked Over 600 Student Visas, Data Shows — Including Some for Pro-Palestine Activism

Washington (Quds News Network)- More than 600 international students and recent graduates in the U.S. have had their visas revoked or their legal status changed by the State Department, according to newly compiled data from across the country. Some of these cases were linked to pro-Palestine activism, while others involved “minor crimes.”

The data, collected by Inside Higher Ed, shows that as of Thursday more than 100 colleges and universities have identified more than 600 cases of students whose immigration status was changed by the Trump administration. These institutions say that their students have lost their F-1 or J-1 student visas.

Some of these cases were related to their pro-Palestine activism, including taking part in protests against Israel’s genocide war in Gaza, and others were for “minor crimes”.

Inside Higher Ed says that the majority of college officials say they’re unsure why the foreign-born students had their visas revoked or have yet to receive formal notification of the changes. Most have still not received any communications from immigration authorities.

The compiled data set was based on public reports and direct correspondence, Inside Higher Ed says. The database, first published 8 April, will be consistently updated at least twice a day.

Late last month, it was reported that the state department had revoked 300 or more student visas in the three weeks that its “Catch and Revoke” program was in operation.

The initiative, newly launched by the state department, which says it is at least partly powered by artificial intelligence (AI), scrapes social media to find “foreign nationals who appear to support Hamas or other designated terror groups” and cancel their visas, according to reporting from Axios.

The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, confirmed the scale of the March crackdown and referred to the student activists as “lunatics”. He told reporters during a visit to Guyana in South America when asked about the visa terminations: “Maybe more than 300 at this point” have lost their visas. “We do it every day, every time I find one of these lunatics.”

Two cases which received widespread attention were those of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate who led pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus last summer, and Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish student at Tufts University who was arrested in apparent retaliation for an op-ed she wrote that was critical of Israel’s war and occupation. Both are in Ice detention fighting their deportations on the grounds that their actions constituted free speech under the first amendment.

As he campaigned for a second term in the White House, US President Donald Trump pledged to stop the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that erupted after Israel launched its deadly war on Gaza and deport any foreign students involved.

Upon taking office, he began to issue executive actions signalling he would carry out his threats.

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” Trump said in a White House fact sheet.

“I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”