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Federal officials have revoked the visas of five international students at the University of Iowa, according to the Campaign to Organize Graduate Students.
Russell Ganim, associate provost and dean of international programs, made the announcement in a webinar Monday, according to the union.
The move follows the Trump administration revoking the visa of a UI international graduate student at the beginning of the month, according to an email sent to international students on April 10.
Revoking international student visas is part of President Donald Trump’s aim to deport those who participated in pro-Palestine protests, which has since expanded to revoking visas for minor infractions such as traffic violations.
Nearly 300 international students were stripped of their visas in recent days. The charge is largely led by Secretary of State Marco Rubios’s “Catch and Release” program, according to an exclusive by Axios, that has focused deportation efforts on students who protested against the war in Gaza.
Those with their visas revoked face deportation.
International students make up nearly one-third of the UI’s graduate student population. Nationally, more than 1.5 million people were in the U.S. in 2023 under student visas issued by the State Department, according to a government report.
The Campaign to Organize Graduate Students, or COGs, wrote in a news release Tuesday, encouraging international students to carry physical color copies of their immigration documents at all times.
Cary Stough, COGs president, said the news of the other four students is very frightening and called on the UI to protect the students whose visas have been revoked.
“We believe that the University of Iowa, the admin and faculty, as well as everybody else, has the moral obligation to stand up for these folks,” Stough said. “Stand up for them and stand up against these federal policies that are taking some of our most important researchers and future researchers out of Iowa.”
Stough said most legal counsel has advised international students not to travel out of the U.S. while still on visa, and this presents the problem that they will not be able to get jobs outside of the university.
In the news release, COGs said if someone has their student visa revoked or flagged, they should contact the UI Immigration Law Clinic, the UI International Students and Scholar Services, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
There are four circumstances under which the U.S. State Department can revoke a visa, according to its website. The first is flagged as unavailable:
- The individual is not eligible for the visa classification
- The visa has been physically removed from the passport in which it was issued
- The individual’s biometric or biographic information has been flagged by the Department of Homeland Security’s Automated Biometric Identification System and added to a watch list for an arrest or conviction of driving under the influence, driving while intoxicated, or similar arrests/convictions that occurred within the previous five years
“We again assure our members that COGs will do whatever we can in order to protect each other,” the Tuesday news release said. “When governments and institutions fail to do so, we must keep one another safe.”