During the second presidency of Donald Trump, the United States has pursued a policy of targeting political dissidents, particularly pro-Palestinian international students and academics, for deportation. As of April 17, 2025, over 1,000 international students and graduates had had their visas revoked or their status terminated, and by May 15, 2025, almost 2,000 student visas had been canceled, though many had been restored by courts. Many of the visas were revoked based on minor violations such as speeding tickets, and only for a handful was national security cited as the basis for revocation. Unsealed court depositions have revealed extensive use of the website Canary Mission by the Trump administration to identify pro-Palestinian activists for deportation and the heavy involvement of Trump aide Stephen Miller.

Background

The United States has long used its immigration policy as a tool for political control, particularly during the First and Second Red Scare. During the Palmer Raids, hundreds of left-wing immigrants were deported due to their political activities. Deportation was used to circumvent their constitutional rights when they could not be charged with a crime in the domestic legal system. Fear of immigrant radicalism led to the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which expanded the government's powers to investigate and deport immigrants for their political beliefs.

In August 2015, during his first presidential campaign, Trump proposed mass deportation of illegal immigrants. He proposed a "Deportation Force" to carry out this plan, modeled after the 1950s-era "Operation Wetback" program during the Dwight Eisenhower administration that ended after a congressional investigation. He returned to this idea during his third presidential campaign, and blurred the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants, promising to deport both. To achieve the goal of deporting millions per year, Trump stated his intention to expand deportations without due process, which would be accomplished by the expedited removal authorities of 8 U.S. Code § 1225; invoking the Alien Enemies Act within the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798; and invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to allow the military to apprehend migrants and thus bypass the Posse Comitatus Act.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids would expand to include workplace raids and sweeps in public places. Stephen Miller said that illegal immigrants would be taken to "large-scale staging grounds near the border, most likely in Texas", to be held in internment camps before deportation. In September 2024, Trump told a rally audience that the deportation effort "will be a bloody story".

Use of social media to identify potential deportees The Trump administration is reportedly using an artificial intelligence "catch and revoke" program to scrape social media posts and identify students who allegedly support Hamas. A number of detained and deported activists have been targeted by doxing campaigns before their arrest.

On March 25, 2025, the state department issued a directive stating that visa applicants would be ineligible if their social media activity indicated that they were "advocating for, sympathizing with, or persuading others to endorse or espouse terrorist activities or support a designated foreign terrorist organization", and that similar activity could result in the revocation of existing visas. On April 9, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it would screen social media accounts for anything it deems "antisemitic".

Targeting of higher education The administration has focused its catch and revoke program on foreign students who have engaged in pro-Palestinian speech, characterizing them as pro-Hamas. The government plans to use its Student and Exchange Visitor Program to review institutions of higher education that have had significant pro-Palestinian protests, suggesting that it may decertify those institutions, making them ineligible to enroll student visa holders. Revocation of student visas also threatens a revenue stream for colleges and universities, with one senior Department of Justice official saying, "That's one of their biggest cash cows, foreign students."

On April 8, 2025, in response to the large number of student visa revocations, Inside Higher Ed began tracking the number of known visa revocations for students and recent alumni and mapping the colleges and universities reporting visa revocations. As of April 9, the tracker showed 419 students and recent alumni from over 80 institutions of higher education across the U.S. In many cases, immigration authorities had not notified the institutions of the reasons for the visa revocations.

On May 28, 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the US would "aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students" and "revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong." China's ministry of foreign affairs formally objected to Rubio's announcement.

American Association of University Professors v. Rubio

On March 25, 2025, the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association sued the Trump administration, arguing that it was promoting an "ideological-deportation policy" that harmed not only those the administration was attempting to deport but also university communities more generally, and that pursuing students and faculty on the basis of their views is unconstitutional. The plaintiffs, represented by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, filed their suit in the District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and asserted that the policy violated the First and Fifth Amendments. The case, American Association of University Professors v. Rubio, was assigned to Judge William G. Young.

The Trump administration moved that the case be dismissed for lack of standing, and also claimed that there was no ideological-deportation policy and that the district court had no jurisdiction over immigration enforcement. On April 30, 2025, Young dismissed the Fifth Amendment challenge but ruled that the First Amendment challenge could proceed, saying, "It is well established that noncitizens have at least some First Amendment rights, and political speech is 'at the core of what the First Amendment is designed to protect.'"

On July 9, 2025, unsealed deposition transcripts by Young revealed that the Trump administration relied heavily on the website Canary Mission to identify pro-Palestinian activists for deportation, and that Trump aide Stephen Miller was deeply involved in the effort.

In September 2025, Young ruled for the plaintiffs, holding that the government had violated the First Amendment, and concluding: The decision notably contained a lengthy rebuke of President Trump, saying he violated his oath of office to the Constitution and engaged in "a full-throated assault on the First Amendment".

January 2026

In January 2026, Young unsealed internal documents that, according to The New York Times, "indicate that in nearly all instances, the arrests of the students were recommended based on their involvement in campus protests and public writings, activities that the Trump administration routinely equated to antisemitic hate speech and support for terrorist organizations." The administration wrote of multiple students, "D.H.S. has not identified any alternative grounds for removability" other than a determination by the US Secretary of State that "the alien's presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States" on the basis of "the alien's past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations that are otherwise lawful". The administration wrote that there was no evidence Öztürk had "engaged in any antisemitic activity” or made “any public statements indicating support for a terrorist organization or antisemitism generally." An official testified in 2025 that the administration reviewed lists compiled by Canary Mission and Betar US.

In January 2026, Young declared the policy unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act. Young also gave AAUP or MESA members challenging adverse immigration status changes a presumption that the change was retribution from their protected speech. He wrote, "Relief is limited pursuant to CASA" and "Plaintiffs [...] have shown by clear and convincing evidence that Secretaries Noem and Rubio have intentionally and in concert implemented Executive Orders in 14161 and 14188 a viewpoint-discriminatory way to chill protected speech" that "violated the First Amendment." "Upon the [...] filing a complaint" by an AAUP or MESA member, "removal from the United States is automatically stayed during the pendency of the Sanction Action. The United States bears the burden affirmatively to ascertain and determine whether such person has filed a Sanction Action in the United States District Courts [...] The reason for this burden-shift is to prevent the apparent present practice of whisking non-citizens out of the district to avoid jurisdiction. The burden is minimal: all the United States need do is check the Sanction Plaintiff's name on PACER [...] This stay is akin to those temporary stays presently in effect in many district courts. See, e.g., United States v. Russell". Young also appended "two hypotheticals" that "are not of record in this case". The first is a noncitizen from Venezuela who is a member of the AAUP or MESA and whose temporary protected status is revoked. "the government's got to prove it [i.e. that the Presidential action in no way constituted retribution]. And that's part of the sanction." The second hypothetical is a noncitizen member of the AAUP or MESA who says something about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. "Well again, the government's going to have to prove that their reason was not in fact in retribution ... and in addition, my second, that it's an appropriate exercise of governmental power."

Detention of activists

Yunseo Chung Chung is a Columbia University student who came to the U.S. from South Korea at age 7 and is a lawful permanent resident with a green card. On March 5, she was among a group of protesters arrested during a sit-in at Barnard College to express solidarity with students protesting the Gaza war who had been expelled. Charges against Chung were dropped. The government characterized the protest as "pro-Hamas", a claim Chung's lawyer rejected, saying, "The idea that a valedictorian just shows some humanity to fellow people is somehow a threat to U.S. foreign policy, and it really makes you wonder what's going on with our foreign policy."

On March 10, federal law enforcement told Chung's lawyer that Chung's permanent resident status was being revoked. Agents searched for Chung at her dorm and her parents' home, though she was not there. Federal agents had searched for Chung at various Columbia residences pursuant to a federal criminal warrant for harboring out-of-status noncitizens. Chung's lawyer filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the District Court for the Southern District of New York, and the case was assigned to judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, who ruled that Chung could not be detained for the time being. The stay on Chung's detention was extended in May and blocked by a federal court ruling in June.

Beto Coral