USA: Stop Targetting Foreign Students For Protest
On 8 March 2025, the US government detained Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student who served as a spokesperson/negotiator for campus protesters and is a permanent residency. Soon after, the apprehension and detention of nine additional foreign students who participated in protests or spoke out against the war in the occupied Gaza Strip and the USA’s role in the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the revocation of their visas or residency status became public. Two of the students on visas decided to leave the country rather than face the inhumane conditions within the US immigration detention system and potential deportation.
A video of the apprehension of a PhD student showed her being intercepted on the street near her home in late March by six plainclothes and mostly masked immigration officers and placed in an unmarked car. The agents reportedly refused to identify themselves until after she was detained. She co-wrote an opinion piece in her school newspaper criticizing her school’s lack of response to the university students’ demands regarding the genocide in Gaza. A US Department of Homeland Security spokesperson later claimed the student “engaged in activities in support Hamas” without providing any evidence. Another permanent resident who was an organizer of pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University was detained by immigration officials as he attended an interview as part of his application for US citizenship. Federal courts have since ordered all detained students to be released as they continue to challenge their immigration cases.
Amnesty International research documents how the State Department’s repressive AI-driven “Catch and Revoke” initiative combines constant social media monitoring, visa status tracking, and automated threat assessments of foreign individuals on visas, including international students, risking arbitrary and unlawful visa revocations, detentions, deportations and violations of the rights to privacy, freedom of expression and access to information, freedoms of movement equality and non-discrimination, and the right to liberty and protest.
The US government is asserting that it has broad power under a rarely used component of immigration law to revoke the visas and residency statuses on foreign policy grounds and remove foreign students who participated in protests against the ongoing conflict in the occupied Gaza Strip. The statute, 8 USC 1251(a)(4)(C)(i), allows the Secretary of State to deport any noncitizen whom he has reasonable grounds to believe the noncitizen's "presence or activities...would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States." According to a legal filing, there have been some 11.7 million removal cases since the current law was enacted in 1990. In only 15 of those cases was that provision invoked and only four individuals ever were ultimately ordered removed or deported after being charged with removability under this ground.
All people, regardless of immigration status, have the human rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and due process and to be free from discrimination. Students who refuse to abandon their studies and leave the country or who are detained by immigration officials risk being held in the US immigration detention system, which Amnesty International has previously documented as cruel, abusive, and fails to meet international standards.