The Trump administration has revoked the visas of more than 1,000 foreign university students since January 2025. Many of the individual cases that have made headlines center on foreign-born university students who participated in Palestinian rights protests.

In early March, the federal government arrested, detained and began deportation proceedings against Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident born in Syria to Palestinian parents. Khalil participated in Palestinian rights protests at Columbia University in 2024.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in an April 9 memo that allowing Khalil to stay in the country would create a “hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.”

“The foreign policy of the United States champions core American interests and American citizens and condoning anti-Semitic conduct and disruptive protests in the United States would severely undermine that significant foreign policy objective,” Rubio wrote.

Khalil is not the only noncitizen university student with legal permission to be in the U.S. who has been arrested and faces deportation after being involved in the Palestinian rights movement.

Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish-born student at Tufts University, was detained by immigration authorities on March 25 near her Massachusetts home and is currently being held in Louisiana.

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