The Trump administration keeps shifting the battleground over international students' visas as it pulls more and more government levers to crack down on the group.

What started with allegedly combatting campus antisemitism by going after pro-Palestinian activists has escalated into attempts to take away all of Harvard University’s foreign students, threats to cap international student admissions at 15 percent at all colleges and Secretary of State Marco Rubio announcing he would "aggressively revoke visas" for Chinese students.

The moving goalposts are difficult to navigate for students and universities and could do long-term damage to a process that experts say brings minds and money to U.S. shores while exporting American values and culture.

“I think he has multiple legitimate motives for taking the actions he's taking, and that those motives are at least in some ways connected. There's a general theme that underlies them. And the general theme is that that Trump appears concerned that a segment, not the average, but a segment of international students are coming for political purposes, not educational or scientific ones,” said Jay Greene, senior research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

President Trump has made cracking down on immigration one of his signature agenda items, though the moves against student visas in particular started off comparatively small, with the administration going after........

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