Secretary of student visas: Marco Rubio turns into campus gatekeeper

WASHINGTON — The role of secretary of state inevitably rests on the diplomatic skillset of being a strategic communicator and delicate negotiator.

Marco Rubio’s added another, less expected proficiency to his tenure at the State Department: student hunter.

In his three months as the country’s top diplomat, Rubio has wielded a seldom-used authority under U.S. immigration law to cancel hundreds of student visas — at times citing political viewpoints as the sole justification. While the State Department has not disclosed official figures, a review by Inside Higher Ed approximates 1,700 visas have been revoked, including 18 at Florida International University, where Rubio himself once taught a political science class.

This aggressive approach to excise international students has positioned Rubio at the vanguard of the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on foreign-born people they view as threats to the national interest — a campaign that critics have denounced as an “unprovoked assault on international students” that threatens bedrock American freedoms.

The offensive has sparked vehement debate about the balance between national security concerns and constitutional rights on American campuses.

Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz said she was horrified by the Trump administration’s policy and predicted a harmful effect across the U.S. economy, “from stunting our health care workforce and advanced engineering expertise to scaring office tourism and investment.”

There’s some indication the numbers are climbing into the thousands: The American Immigration Lawyers Association calculates that terminations of visa-holding students has surpassed 4,700 since Trump took office. That assessment is based on data the group has received from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, a university tracking system created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the Department of Homeland Security relies on to ensure students comply with visa rules. Many of these revocations fall outside of Rubio’s purview.

The secretary of state has held the authority over student visas for more than three decades as part of immigration law, but the power to revoke them has rarely been employed in such a concerted fashion, until now. In exercising the power, Rubio has fully embraced the idea that visas are a privilege that can be rescinded based on behavior — and are not an unalienable right.

“It’s not in our foreign policy interest, it’s not in our national security interest, to invite people onto our university campuses … who are also going to go there to foment movements that support and excuse foreign terrorist organizations who are committed to the destruction of the United States and the killing and the raping and the kidnapping of innocent civilians — not just in Israel but anywhere they can get their hands on them,” Rubio told conservative media personality Ben Shapiro last week.

‘Keep your head down’

Some of the most high-profile targets on campuses have engaged in pro-Palestinian activism and criticism of Israel. What’s less clear is the government’s contention that they’ve aligned themselves with Hamas, the murderous group responsible for the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel.

Others have been ensnared by years-old legal problems — for driving under the influence or speeding — that have been facilitated by the Department of Homeland Security. In some cases, charges were never filed but are being newly revisited.

And then there are those that have been provided little to no reason for the sudden change in their legal status.

“International students are incredibly afraid. There are students being advised not to go anywhere near a lawful, peaceful protest. Certainly scrub your social media. Don’t say anything, keep your head down. Which is creating a group of people with sort-of second status in terms of some of their fundamental rights,” said Robert Tsai, a professor at the Boston University School of Law.

But since they aren’t citizens, Rubio’s argument is that this population — which comes from all over the world to study fields like computer science, engineering and business — isn’t entitled to the same protections.

“I don’t know if people realize if you commit a crime while you’re in the U.S., that’s an automatic grounds for revoking your visa. And no one was ever doing it. They weren’t doing it. They weren’t cross-referencing the system. Now they’re starting to do that,” Rubio told Shapiro.

A State Department spokesman declined to confirm any numbers for this story, saying “because the process is ongoing, the number of revocations is dynamic.” But he added: “The department revokes visas every day in order to secure America’s borders and keep our communities safe.”

Courts and consequences

Like much of the Trump administration’s second term executive actions, Rubio’s rescissions are coursing their way through the courts.

Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts University student from Turkey whose visa was revoked because the State Department said she had indicated “support for a designated terrorist organization” through an op-ed, is scheduled for two hearings in May to determine her fate. A federal judge in Vermont has already ruled she cannot be deported without a court order.

Ozturk’s student newspaper piece referenced support for Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine and she called for the university to divest from companies that do business with Israel.

“The Tufts student, for example … just wrote an op-ed,” said Tsai. “Now imagine all these other people whose visas have been cancelled we know nothing about. Presumably some of them did nothing at all.”

At Columbia University, graduate student Mahmoud Khalil wasn’t accused of criminal activity either. He was arrested and detained for protest activities deemed to pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” by the secretary of state. While he remains in the same immigration detention facility in Louisiana as Ozturk, a court has halted his deportation due to an ongoing appeal.

“This is not normal. No part of this is legal or just,” said Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat from Massachusetts, after visiting the ICE detention center Tuesday.

Attorneys are rushing to try and distinguish the cases involving an actual crime from those centering on political speech, however unpopular or controversial.

“Of course the federal government has the authority to revoke visas and terminate status for noncitizens in the U.S., but it must do so in a way that is consistent with the law and facts and not arbitrarily or for the simple reason that they disagree with someone’s politics,” said Jorge Loweree, the managing director of programs and strategy at the American Immigration Council..

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has been at the center of the battle over Trump’s broader deportation campaign to El Salvador, is seeking to reinstate the legal status of over 1,000 students whose visas have been revoked on the basis that the actions were taken without proper notice or explanation. Similar cases are unfurling in Georgia, Utah and Michigan.

A recent survey by FIRE — the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression — found that 52% of Americans oppose the federal government deporting student visa holders for expressing pro-Palestinian views, with just 26% supporting the action.

As of this month, the U.S. government is mandating social media vetting for all visa applicants who have visited the Gaza Strip since 2007. A Japanese English-language magazine reported on a State Department notice this week requiring all U.S. visa applicants to disclose five years of their social media history. Some U.S. embassies in Europe have issued social media warnings to potential visa applicants, using quotes by Rubio to urge them to consider their behavior.

Analysts believe the practical effect of warnings abroad and terminations at home will have a chilling effect on people who invest significant time, energy and resources to come to the U.S. to study, leading to a reduction in the 1 million-person foreign-born student population over the next few years.

Rubio himself has lamented the scores of individuals in America who he says were “slandered, fired, charged and even jailed” by the Biden administration “for simply voicing their opinions.”

Earlier this year at the Munich Security Conference, Vice President JD Vance scolded Europeans for what he believes is a suppression of free speech and democratic expression.

“How can the Trump administration say with a straight face that others should tolerate the most extreme forms of expression,” asked Brett Bruen, a former diplomat who ran the educational exchange programs in the Obama administration, “but we won’t abide even peaceful protests?”