International students in Pa. and N.J. have had their visas revoked by the Trump administration, sparking anxiety on college campuses

At a moment when the Trump administration is targeting international students at American universities, Haverford College has issued fresh guidance to help students if they are approached by ICE.

“Haverford is private property,” school leaders wrote to the college community last week, “and our protocols are clear: ICE agents are not permitted on campus without a judicial warrant.”

Students who are stopped by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, or someone they believe is an agent, should immediately call campus security. They may not authorize ICE to go inside campus buildings, and can refuse access if agents attempt to enter student housing, wrote Lillian Burroughs, in charge of campus safety and security, and John McKnight, vice president and dean of the college.

The school said no specific incident triggered the notice, which was sent by email and posted on social media.

“During a town hall on Monday, students requested that this guidance be shared more broadly to ensure that all students, faculty, and staff know what to do if ICE is, or is suspected to be, on campus,” said Melissa Shaffmaster, the college’s vice president for marketing and communications.

It comes as many college campuses locally and nationwide are suddenly awash in immigration worries.

Students at Temple University, Rutgers University, the University of Pennsylvania, and other schools have had their permission to study in this country revoked.

Federal agents have searched dorm rooms at Columbia University, and seized a Tufts University student off a Massachusetts street in an arrest captured on video.

“She was disappeared,” Philippe Weisz, legal services director of HIAS Pennsylvania, said Thursday, describing the woman’s arrest by masked officers.

The Trump administration accused Turkish doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk of supporting the terrorist organization Hamas but provided no evidence. Neighbors told news reporters that her arrest looked like a kidnapping.

She was later found to have been taken to an ICE detention center in Louisiana, where she remains.

That comes as President Donald Trump’s administration has revoked visas for hundreds of international students at colleges from coast to coast. Some students have been accused of taking part in pro-Palestinian protests, though others appear not to have engaged in political activity.

In many cases the reason for revocation is unknown.

What started as a trickle has become a flow that rises almost by the hour, topping 800 revocations as of Friday and setting off a contentious legal, moral, and ethical debate.

Students have had visas rescinded at Harvard, Arizona State, Johns Hopkins, Duke, Cornell, and elsewhere — including 40 at Northeastern University in Massachusetts, according to a national tracker created by Inside Higher Ed.

In Pennsylvania, seven visas were revoked at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, while others were taken away at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Pittsburgh.

Last week, about a dozen students at Rutgers University in New Brunswick were informed without government explanation that their status had been terminated. Rutgers president Jonathan Holloway called it “chilling” in a message to the college community.

At Rowan University in South Jersey, eight students had their ability to study in this country rescinded, school leaders said Wednesday. The situation is different for each, the school said, without providing details.

The university issued a statement saying it had met with each student to provide guidance and options to help them graduate from Rowan.

“It’s crucial that we support our international students in any way possible at this time,” University Senate president Bill Freind said in an email to his colleagues. “Check on them, ask them how they’re doing, and let them know that you’re here for them. … Please work with them to ensure they can complete the class.”

Temple University confirmed that a student had “self-deported” after a visa revocation, but provided no other information.

Penn leaders said last week that authorization to study here had been revoked for three students, none of which seemed to be related to protest activity but instead to what the school said were “immigration status violations.”

The university also said it had “reports of encounters with ICE agents at Penn and additional visa revocations” but offered no details.

Penn law professor Sarah Paoletti, who founded and directs the school’s Transnational Legal Clinic, said the Trump administration’s actions have “created a tremendous amount of anxiety.”

“Students are worried about, ‘Did I put anything in social media that might trigger something? Was I walking through the quad at the wrong time?’ ” she said. “It is disturbing to see an assault on students who are learning how to navigate a difficult environment, and learning how to find their voice, and learning how to participate in democracy.”

Inquirer efforts to contact individual students who had their visas revoked were unsuccessful.

The United States hosted an all-time high of more than 1.1 million international students during the 2023-24 academic year, with more than half coming from India and China.

A degree from a U.S. university, particularly from those in the upper tiers, is highly prized in many countries, and families often spend years saving money to be able to afford it for their children.

In January, Trump issued an executive order to fight what his administration called “the explosion of anti-Semitism on our campuses and streets” that followed the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.

Trump officials have claimed that some of the students supported Hamas, while student advocates say the president has trampled constitutional rights to free speech and assembly.

“Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in late March, criticizing students who he said “are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus.”

Several lawsuits have been filed to have student visas reinstated, including one by the ACLU of New Hampshire and the firm of Shaheen & Gordon. They represent a Dartmouth College student who attorneys said never committed so much as a traffic violation nor participated in any protest.

Sirine Shebaya, executive director of the National Immigration Project, said she expects visa revocations to continue. They are, she said, part of a Trump effort to target a broad swath of American society around immigration.

“It’s been very much this pattern of finding anywhere they can go to target people and deport them,” Shebaya said during a Thursday conference call. “It started with students who are expressing certain kinds of political speech, but then it sort of opened the door to looking at student visas in general, and then trying to have that be another place where they can increase their numbers.”

Staff writer Susan Snyder contributed to this article.