By Max Crumley-Effinger 

Prior to President Trump’s January 20, 2025 inauguration, international students’ choices and lives in the country were often bound explicitly by U.S. visa policy. For many students, this means that decisions about personal, professional, and academic matters are filtered through their understanding of what is and is not allowed by the rules associated with their immigration status. I call this policy pervasion, due to the pervasive influence of student visa policy on many international student’s lives in the country.¹ Examples include students choosing majors based on immigration benefits afforded to certain majors, or foregoing visiting terminally ill family members abroad due to immigration benefit processing wait times.

But with the beginning of “Trump 2.0”, this policy pervasion is taking on a grim tenor as stark new sources of uncertainty appear with dizzying speed for international students, seemingly at the whim of individual government officials. Sources of concern arising from this “whimmigration” include: stories about nonimmigrants being denied entry into the country², threats to colleges’ eligibility to enroll international students³ (and follow-through in the case of Harvard⁴), highly publicized arrests of international students⁵,⁶, visa revocations⁷ including through the use of artificial intelligence⁸, new targeting of the Optional Practical Training program⁹, fresh uncertainties about student visa issuance and associated social media screenings¹⁰, and unwarranted terminations of students’ immigration status¹¹. And despite corrections to some students’ statuses¹²—likely prompted by the growing pushback from students and institutions, including a number of lawsuits¹³—the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has indicated that there are forthcoming changes that will grant new termination rights to the government.¹⁴

There is great diversity in who identifies as an international student in the United States, but I focus specifically here on the hundreds of thousands of students who attend school through F-1 nonimmigrant status. Already subject to close monitoring¹⁵,¹⁶, in order to remain in the U.S. F-1 students must follow a collection of rules outlined in the Code of Federal Regulations, for example, meeting course enrollment requirements, adhering to strict employment limitations, keeping residential and contact information updated, and completing detailed check-in tasks throughout their studies.

These rules for status maintenance are not new and they have not changed. Despite this, uncertainty is growing: Many students are likely no longer certain that the standing rules for maintenance of status will be the rules against which their conduct is measured. Nor is there any certainty that actions taken on their records or with cherished programs—at the whim of those at DHS, the Department of State, or elsewhere in the federal government—will follow regulatory requirements or norms. All of this means that these students may be in the dark about what constitutes a risk to their legal status, greatly increasing the precarity of their standing in the country.

What was a fairly straightforward collection of reporting and compliance requirements has seemingly morphed into an immigration compliance “black box” of unknown limits to, and expectations of, what the federal government deems acceptable. For example:

• What social media activity will be caught in the net of (AI) reviews of “acceptable” or “punishable” speech? 
• Do international students have freedom of speech in the U.S., or are some topics off-limits, especially in terms of protest or social media activity, putting their status at risk? 
• How will students be supported by their schools without either party incurring the ire of the federal government? 
• Will the criteria for government support or adjudication of applications for benefits be based on students’ comportment beyond simply following the standard rules to maintain their status? 

Meeting this new moment of extreme uncertainty are thousands of committed individuals—students, attorneys, administrators, faculty, and more—who are pushing back, arguing that these students deserve clarity and transparency, due process and humanity, and that the moment necessitates economic rationality and fairness. This work has the potential to dismantle the developing immigration black box the new administration has constructed, while constituting efforts to reassert, realize, and reify the words of the national campaign to support international students during the first Trump administration: You are Welcome Here.¹⁷

For new prospective students, as well as the hundreds of thousands of international students who have built lives, contributed in the classroom and in their communities, and made significant investments in the country, it remains to be seen how many will truly feel welcome, or even safe. Unfortunately, recent government actions and growing xenophobia indicate that while international students are often passionately welcomed, embraced, and valued at community and school levels, the federal government is making this welcome highly fraught and conditional, and predicated on opaque and changing expectations.

All opinions expressed here are the author’s own and do not represent the views of Emerson College.

Max Crumley-Effinger, PhD conducts research on international student mobility and migration and is the Assistant Director of International Student Affairs at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

References

¹Crumley-Effinger, M. (2024). ISM policy pervasion: Visas, study permits, and the international student experience. Journal of International Students, 14(1), pp. 78-96. https://doi.org/10.32674/jis.v14i1.5347.

²Aggarwal, M. (2025). Denied, deported, detained: U.S. border incidents have travelers thinking twice. NBC News. Accessed 30 April 2025 from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/trump-immigration-detained-visitors-border-search-device-visa-passport-rcna197736

³Fischer, K. (2025). Some colleges could lose approval to enroll international students. The Chronicle. Accessed 30 April 2025 from https://www.chronicle.com/newsletter/latitudes/2025-04-02

⁴Epstein, K. (2025). Trump administration ends Harvard's ability to enrol international students. Accessed 28 May 2025 from https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c05768jmm11o

⁵Kumar, S. (2025). Tufts University Declaration for Rümeysa Öztürk. Tufts University. Accessed 30 April 2025 from https://www.tufts.edu/president/speeches-and-messages/04022025-university-declaration-for-rumeysa-ozturk

⁶Drenon, B. (2025). US immigration officials arrest Turkish student amid crackdown. BBC. Accessed 30 April 2025 from https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czrn57340xlo

⁷Sabes, A. (2025). Trump administration begins new wave of international student visa revocations: 'No one has a right to a visa'. Fox News. Accessed 30 April 2025 from https://www.foxnews.com/us/trump-administration-begins-new-wave-international-student-visa-revocations-no-one-has-right-visa

⁸Singh, K. (2025). Rights advocates concerned by reported US plan to use AI to revoke student visas. Reuters. Accessed 1 May 2025 from https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/us-use-ai-revoke-visas-students-perceived-hamas-supporters-axios-reports-2025-03-06/ 

⁹Anderson, S. (2025). Snubbing Trump, Immigration Nominee Would End Student Practical Training. Accessed 28 May 2025 from https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2025/05/22/snubbing-trump-immigration-nominee-will-end-student-practical-training/

¹⁰Lee, M., & Ma, A. (2025). US stops scheduling visa interviews for foreign students while it expands social media vetting. Accessed 28 May 2025 from https://apnews.com/article/student-visa-social-media-d71aa33ff756c1383b362f69bf5b7a17

¹¹NAFSA. (2025). ICE-Initiated SEVIS Record Terminations. NAFSA. Accessed 30 April 2025 from https://www.nafsa.org/regulatory-information/ice-initiated-sevis-record-terminations?login=success&check_logged_in=1

¹²Nash, P. (2025). Trump administration reverses termination of student visas. The PIE. Accessed 30 April 2025 from https://thepienews.com/trump-administration-reverses-termination-of-student-visas/

¹³ACLU. (2025). ACLU files class action lawsuit challenging terminated student status of students in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico. ACLU. Accessed 30 April 2025 from https://www.aclu-nh.org/en/press-releases/aclu-files-class-action-lawsuit-challenging-terminated-student-status-students-new

¹⁴Garcia et al. (2025). Trump administration restores status of international students after abrupt terminations. ABC News. Accessed 30 April 2025 from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-restores-status-international-students-after-abrupt/story?id=121197087

¹⁵Allen, R., & Bista, K. (2022). Talented, Yet Seen With Suspicion: Surveillance of International Students and Scholars in the United States. Journal of International Students, 12(1), 175–194. https://doi.org/10.32674/jis.v12i1.3410

¹⁶Crumley-Effinger, M. (2022). SEVIS, surveillance, and international students: New avenues for international education surveillance studies. In A. Wiseman (Ed.), Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2021 (pp. 141-161). Emerald Publishing.

¹⁷Marsh, N. (2017). US HEIs tell int’l students: “You are welcome here”. The PIE. Accessed 30 April 2025 from https://thepienews.com/us-heis-tell-intl-students-youarewelcomehere/