Students at Fordham University and New York University had their visas revoked in recent days under President Donald Trump’s widening crackdown on foreign students, according to messages from school administrators.
NYU President Linda Mills emailed students and faculty late Tuesday noting that “some members of our own community are among those affected” by recent government terminations of international student visas, according to a copy of the note obtained by THE CITY.
The email, titled “Important Immigration Update and Ongoing Support for Our International Community,” declined to say how many students had their visas yanked, citing privacy concerns, but said that the university’s Office of Global Services was in touch with them.
A spokesperson for the university didn’t return a request for additional comment and the email didn’t say if the targeted students took part in campus demonstrations against the war in Gaza over the past year. The Washington Square News, NYU’s student publication, first reported on Mill’s email.
Vasuki Nesiah, a human rights professor of practice at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, said she was deeply disappointed by Mill’s note.
“There was no condemnation of a deeply problematic deportation policy, and no meaningful reassurance to vulnerable members of the NYU community that the university has their back,” she wrote in an email to THE CITY.
The university said in December that it hosted more international students than any other American university — 27,247 in total.
Nesiah noted that she’d been in touch with many international students in recent days who worried about being targeted by the Trump administration in an effort being led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “NYU markets itself as the global university so it is especially disappointing that it is leaving its international students and faculty vulnerable in such precarious times.”
At Fordham, at least two students have had their visas pulled, Bob Howe, a spokesperson for the university, confirmed Wednesday. Fordham officials, like their counterparts at Columbia University, identified the students during proactive checks of the “Student and Exchange Visitor Information System,” or SEVIS, where all international student records are maintained, he said.
While college administrators traditionally used that system to certify with the government that visa holders were continuing their studies, the Trump administration has been accessing it directly to revoke their permissions — often without notifying either the students or their school — a development first reported by the news organization Netzeo.
Howe said it doesn’t appear that the students were involved with last year’s protests, although the university couldn’t say for sure. Students there briefly set up a pro-Palestinian encampment last spring at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus before it was cleared by the NYPD.
The Fordham Ram, the university’s student publication, first reported the two visa revocations Wednesday. President Tania Tetlow had warned the campus community in an email on April 4 that they had identified the first undergraduate student impacted.
“For many of the brilliant members of the Fordham community joining us from countries around the world, this is a source of growing distress and anxiety,” she wrote in an email obtained by THE CITY. “I wish it were within my power to offer you reassurance.”
The visa revocations at Fordham and NYU followed an announcement from Columbia Monday, saying it had identified four additional students whose visas had been revoked.
That’s on top of revocations of visas and even green cards of three Columbia students, Mahmoud Khalil, Yunseo Chung and Ranjani Srinivasan.
Srinivasan self-deported to Canada, Chung is laying low and fighting her attempted deportation in federal court, while Khalil remains in ICE detention in Louisiana.
An immigration judge there ordered federal authorities to provide evidence that Khalil, who has a green card as a legal permanent resident and is married to a U.S. citizen, warranted deportation for his role in campus demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza, or she would halt the case against him by the end of the week.
Last month, Rubio said around 300 students had had their visas pulled in the administration’s widening dragnet. While Rubio and other State Department figures have justified the move saying the students are “Hamas sympathizers,” they’ve offered little evidence beyond criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza.
In the past several days, reports have emerged of universities across the country identifying students whose visas were suddenly terminated, including at Berklee, Tufts, Emerson, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA, University of Washington, among dozens of others.
The New York Times reported this week that while some students whose visas were pulled had been involved in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, others reported only minor legal infractions from years prior like driving over the speed limit.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security deferred comment to the U.S. Department of State. Asked about the criteria for the revocations, the press office for the State Department provided a transcript to statements made by spokesperson Tammy Bruce earlier this week.
“We don’t go into statistics or numbers; we don’t go into the rationale for what happens with individual visas,” said Bruce. “What we can tell you is that the department revokes visas every day in order to secure our borders and to keep our community safe, and we’ll continue to do so.”
Trump’s Homeland Security agency appeared undeterred, tweeting Wednesday that there was “no room in the United States for the rest of the world’s terrorist sympathizers.”
“Anyone who thinks they can come to America and hide behind the First Amendment to advocate for anti-Semitic violence and terrorism — think again. You are not welcome here.”
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