Four San Diego State University international students have had their visas revoked, the university said Thursday, as the Trump administration continues its immigration crackdown on hundreds of international students across the nation.
Those revocations come in addition to five UC San Diego students who have also had their visas revoked. And one UCSD student was detained at the border and deported to their home country.
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It’s still unclear exactly why the State Department has revoked these visas. SDSU said it would not release details about the students due to privacy laws, and that all students had been notified.
As of Thursday, 48 California State University students have had their visas revoked since the start of the year, according to the university system’s updates page.
UC President Michael Drake said Wednesday the UC knows of 50 students and recent graduates who have had visas revoked. He said the federal government did not give advance warning and had indicated it terminated the visas for alleged violations.
As of last fall, UCSD had more than 7,000 international students enrolled, and SDSU had nearly 1,000.
Meanwhile the CSU system is warning all students, faculty and staff with plans to travel internationally to “proceed with extreme caution” and carefully weigh whether it’s necessary to travel internationally at this time, considering the recent spate of federal immigration enforcement actions as people try to reenter the U.S.
San Diego State says it provides free immigration legal services for students, faculty and staff through a partnership with Jewish Family Service, which also provides services at other local colleges. The CSU system says it also provides such services through a contract with Immigrant Legal Defense.
The increased enforcement against immigrants and visa-holders, as well as threats of cuts to universities that defy Trump administration demands, have created a climate of fear on campuses but also resistance.
The University of San Diego joined more than 80 colleges across the country in filing an amicus curiae brief Wednesday in support of a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s arrests and deportations of students and faculty who have protested Israel’s war in Gaza.
That brief is one of the first large-scale statements by higher education institutions to protest President Donald Trump’s policies targeting international students and immigrants. Its signatories included many Catholic universities, liberal arts colleges, other private universities and a few state universities.
The colleges say the loss of international students, faculty and staff will hurt America’s colleges with reduced enrollment, tuition and scholars, and ultimately hurt American research, innovation and the economy. They warn of a “brain drain” of faculty and students who will instead flock to institutions in other countries.
“The policy presumes that it will benefit the United States while harming only those non-citizens whom the administration dis-favors,” the brief states. “In fact, in the long run, the policy will benefit other countries … and it will grievously harm the United States, by depriving this country of the many benefits that non-citizens at American colleges and universities provide and by diminishing American higher education.”
USD was the only San Diego-area college that signed on to the brief.
On Wednesday, about 100 people participated in a protest against the student visa revocations outside UCSD’s Geisel Library. Students held signs bearing messages like “School is 4 education not deportation!” and “Wake up, rise, resist.” They chanted, “No more hate, no more fear, immigrants are welcome here.”
Aryan Dixit, a protest organizer and member of the school’s Students’ Civil Liberties Union chapter, said there’s a need to speak up and protest now, because more people will be next — not necessarily just those on visas.
Speaker Dominic Garcia, a representative of UCSD’s MEChA student group, made the same point.
“My community has been deported, and many others have walked along like it didn’t matter because they have visas, because they are citizens,” Garcia said. “That is clearly being unfolded right before our eyes.”
Dixit said several students told him they wanted to protest Wednesday but did not for fear it could get them deported. He also condemned the Trump administration’s announcement Wednesday that immigration officials would begin to monitor immigrants’ speech on social media and may deny applications on the basis of it.
“What do you think about your students being too scared to show up on their own campus, in front of their own library right here, because just walking by this place might condemn them to losing their degrees, their futures and their careers?” Dixit said.
Staff writer Gary Robbins contributed to this report.
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