UI international students speak about grappling with previous ICE guidance

For incoming sophomore Paige Ho, learning that she could have been forced to leave the U.S. before completing her second fall semester at the University of Iowa was “shocking.” The journalism and mass communications major has spent the summer in her hometown of Binh Duong, Vietnam. Up until last week, she was busy preparing to return to Iowa in August, but after the guidance was announced, sh...

Aasthika Das, a sophomore studying biology at the UI, said she was initially planning to spend the break between Thanksgiving and the spring semester at home with her family in India, as the break for online classes would allow her time to visit. Although she was planning to leave the U.S at the end of in-person classes, Das said the announcement was a “bit of a shock.” “Initially it was my choice to come back home, and now it�...

 Joslin Some, like many international students, was still waiting to find out exactly how the ruling will affect his situation before Tuesday's announcement. “I was really surprised, and I didn’t know what to make of it. It’s pretty stressful to not know what’s going to happen,” Some said. “Even if we did have to go, there are so many travel bans – where would we go?” Some said h...

Shimin Park said the ICE order felt like a ban on international students. “It’s not an outright ban, but it is,” she said. “From seeing what the Trump administration has been doing, it’s been very anti-immigration, and it is doing exactly that.” Park, a junior from South Korea and the University of Iowa Undergraduate Student Government international student constituency senato...