Some NC international college students seeing visas unexpectedly being revoked

Some international students’ visas are being revoked unexpectedly at colleges and universities across the country, including four in North Carolina.

Six international students at UNC-Charlotte, six international students at UNC-Chapel Hill, two international graduate students, an alumnus on Optional Practical Training at Duke University, and two graduate students at North Carolina State University are among those who have had their student visas revoked, although the reason for the revocation has not been provided by authorities.

The US State Department has rescinded the visas of at least 300 international students in the past month,

According to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the F-1 Visa (Academic Student) allows a person to enter the United States as a full-time student at an accredited college, university, seminary, conservatory, academic high school, elementary school, or other academic institution or in a language training program.

Duke University’s student newspaper, The Chronicle, said on Monday that Kevin D’Arco, Senior Associate dean of international students, and Duke Visa Services Director Dylan Sugiyama emailed international students.

In it, they shared that the State Department informed the students and alumnus that their F-1 visas had been revoked, and that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had been notified of the revocation. Shortly after, the government terminated the students’ visa records in Homeland Security’s Student & Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS).

Carolina Journal reported last week that two North Carolina State University graduate students have left the United States after the US State Department revoked their student visas. The students, both enrolled in the College of Engineering, were informed last week of their visa terminations and, after consulting with attorneys and family members, chose to leave the country voluntarily to avoid deportation.

The two students are from Saudi Arabia, and one of them was identified by the Technician, NC State’s student newspaper, as Saleh Al Gurad. No reason was given by the US State Department for the revocation. However, in other recent examples of student visa revocations the students were connected to anti-Israel campus protests, while others were canceled for violations like failure to maintain legal status, or reckless driving citations. No information immediately suggests if those were the cases for the North Carolina students.

At a State Department press briefing Tuesday, spokeswoman Tammy Bruce was asked for a threshold used to determine why a student visa would be canceled.

“Well, we’ve never gone into the details of the visa process,” she said. “We don’t discuss individual visas because of the privacy issues involved. We don’t go into statistics or numbers; we don’t go into the rationale for what happens with individual visas. What we can tell you is that the department revokes visas every day in order to secure our borders and to keep our community safe, and we’ll continue to do so.”

Bruce said the criteria are applied appropriately, but was not inclined to answer specifics, adding that the American people know that they take border security and the visa process seriously.

“And the number of revocations, I can say, is dynamic, which is why we don’t give those numbers out,” Bruce told reporters. “And again, we – we’re not going to give statistics, only because of always the continuing fluidity of the situation when it comes to visas and the reasons they are revoked, which is personal and private.”

USCIS, an agency under the US Department of Homeland Security, also announced on Wednesday that, beginning immediately, it will consider antisemitic activity on social media when denying applications for student visas or green cards. This will immediately affect aliens applying for lawful permanent resident status, foreign students, and aliens affiliated with educational institutions linked to antisemitic activity.

“Under this guidance, USCIS will consider social media content that indicates an alien endorsing, espousing, promoting, or supporting antisemitic terrorism, antisemitic terrorist organizations, or other antisemitic activity as a negative factor in any USCIS discretionary analysis when adjudicating immigration benefit requests,” the agency said in a press release.

Thirty-year-old Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian and former graduate student at Columbia University, was the first student arrested as part of the State Department’s effort.

Khalil, who has a green card, was picked up by ICE agents last month for his role in helping organize several anti-Israel protests at Columbia.

He is currently being detained at an ICE detention center in Louisiana where he is fighting the Trump administration’s push to deport him.

The administration also terminated the student visa of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts Ph.D. student from Turkey who was recently taken into custody by ICE agents in Boston. The Department of Homeland Security said her visa was revoked for her alleged “activities in support of Hamas.”

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