As federal authorities are scrutinizing student visas across the country, Iowa immigration attorneys and organizations are advocating for students impacted by the revocations. This comes as immigration courts impose injunctions restricting these revocations, but uncertainty still looms for thousands.
At the University of Iowa, four international students had their student statuses reinstated and their visas restored after the federal government suddenly revoked their visas on April 10.
While this lawsuit offers temporary relief for students, ruling that the students’ statuses could not be terminated without proper justification and blocking the Department of Homeland Security from initiating deportation processes, there is still uncertainty surrounding why the students’ visas were initially revoked and how this will affect them.
Student visas can typically be revoked for minor offenses, such as an operating while intoxicated charge, but as Dan Vondra, a practicing immigration attorney, explained, such offenses are typically not grounds for removal or deportation. Though, it may require a student to prove they’re allowed to be in the country and reapply for a student visa should they leave the country.
“The visa revocation itself does not terminate the status,” Vondra said.
However, in the case of a student’s status being terminated, students may risk being forced to leave the country if they do not voluntarily deport.
This has incited fear across higher education campuses and has caused students to experience, as UI professor Kate Melloy Goettel described in the lawsuit, “intense mental and financial suffering because they cannot continue with their studies and fear being detained and removed if they do so.”
Vondra said the lawsuit filed by Goettel sets the precedent that students will be informed of why their status is being terminated and will have the chance to respond without fear of being removed.
“The precedent and the restraining order in the injunction is important because we need to know specifically why the status is being revoked, and if it has something to do with a constitutionally protected right, then the courts need to know about that,” Vondra said. “The students need to know about that. It becomes an issue where the court might need to get involved so that people who invest their time and energy coming to the United States don’t unlawfully lose what they put into all of this.”
Many students, including those at the UI, were not provided with a reason why their student visas were revoked. In his initial email to UI international students on April 10 to inform students about the first student visa revocation, Associate Provost and Dean of International Programs, Russell Ganim, wrote, “The university did not initiate the action and was not aware of any violations.”
But because of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s “Catch and Revoke” initiative, which uses artificial intelligence to scan social media profiles of international students for any signs that they are supporting pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, or anti-Semitic ideas, many international students fear that speaking out or criticizing the government would be grounds for revocation.
AI scanning of social media is nothing new, as Weiguo “Patrick” Fan, Henry B. Tippie Excellence chair in Business Analytics professor, explained. Also known as social listening tools, AI has been used as an analytical tool in partnership with social media providers for years, often scanning social media posts related to a specific brand, product, or service to track its impact on companies.
Oftentimes using specific keywords or semantic matching, which flags posts or content that is semantically related to a keyword, Donald Trump’s administration has used this technology to target international students, as was the case with Turkish graduate student Rumeysa Öztürk who was detained for an op-ed she wrote for Tufts University’s student paper and Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University, who participated in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
RELATED: Federal court orders to restore UI international students’ visas
“I think right now, definitely, you have to be very careful about what you say and what you post within the social media space,” Fan said.
As he further explained, even setting a social media profile to private doesn’t guarantee that a user’s profile won’t appear in an AI scan because the Department of Homeland Security can request and collect a user’s data for the purpose of monitoring for “anti-semitic activity,” as described by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services webpage.
“The government, the law enforcement agencies, they have the power to be able to access any content they need as long as it’s for legitimate reason,” Fan said. “As consumers, as users, we have to basically set up the proper controls within each social media account. For example, if you post something you do not want anybody else to see, you keep them private, or you don’t post anything at all.”
While Fan advises international students to be cautious of what they post online, Vondra explained that everyone in the U.S., regardless of citizenship status, is guaranteed protection under the same rights.
“This is the United States and we have the First Amendment, it’s the right to free speech,” Vondra said. “That right is guaranteed to everybody in the United States.”
While international students may be anxious to speak up, graduate and undergraduate students at UI are coming together to support international students, to help their voices be heard while still protecting their identity, and by gathering funds to support the international students who had their visas revoked.
This was the case at a protest hosted by UI graduate student union, the Campaign to Organize Graduate Students, and the UI’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors where comments submitted by international students were read anonymously and flyers with a QR code to donate funds to support the international students were passed around.
Similarly, UI’s Latino Student Union, or LSU, has partnered with Escucha Mi Voz, an immigrant-led community organization, to raise funds for the international students to support them amid the uncertainty of having their visas revoked and status terminated.
While donating funds directly supports international students, Eleana Lemus, the vice president of LSU, commented on the importance of staying informed, especially as break and graduation approach.
“The best thing is to stay informed and to stay updated, whether that be with student organizations or reading or even social media, just stay informed,” Lemus said. “If you can, go to one of these meetings and see where you can go from there.”