Maryam walked for two hours through the streets of Gaza, reciting verses of protection from the Quran. She was hunting for a faint internet connection. Under a sky choked with smoke and dust, Maryam wound through roads converted to sprawling tent camps and long lines of children waiting for food, until she arrived at an office building where she could catch a scrap of a data signal.

There, Maryam saw a lifeline. After weeks of applying — and making dangerous trips to connect to the internet — an American university had given her a full-ride admission into its computer science program. “I was trapped in darkness, but God gifted me something to be thankful for,” Maryam said.

That feeling was short-lived. After receiving her acceptance in April, she submitted her visa application earlier this month — right after the Trump administration instructed U.S. embassies to ban most Palestinian visitor visas. These restrictions, put in place in August, apply to students, as well as those traveling to the U.S. for business, medical treatment, or to visit family. “The suspension hit hard, but I was never shocked,” she said.

Continuing her higher education in Gaza would be impossible. Israel destroyed Maryam’s university in Gaza City, where she was a fourth-year software engineering student, in October 2023. She would have deeply grieved the faculty members who were killed, but the constant news of death has numbed her emotions. “Now, I just find a strange sense of peace for those who passed,” she said.

Maryam is one of at least a few dozen Palestinian students who recently received offers and scholarships from American universities. The ban means most Palestinian visa applicants will be refused. The students interviewed by The Intercept for this piece asked to go by pseudonyms, out of fear for their safety.

“The State Department is acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner against victims of genocide by suspending these visas and not giving any context or reason for why,” said Juliette Majid, a co-founder of Student Justice Network, a group that has been helping Palestinian students apply to American universities. “Even with all of these achievements, these students are still looked at as … a threat instead of a gift.”

While the Trump administration

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