- Saturday, April 12, 2025
For dozens of Indian students in the US, their F-1 student visa is being revoked for traffic offences or shop lifting
By: India Weekly
THE TRUMP administration has tightened its scrutiny of foreign students in the US campuses and it is not just the politically active ones who are feeling the heat.
Over the past few days, dozens of Indian students in the US received emails from their college authorities, stating that their F-1 student visa was no longer valid and they have been directed to leave the country immediately, reports Times of India.
In most of these emails, past criminal charges — ranging from “shifting” lanes and drunk driving to even shoplifting — are being cited as reasons for revocations.
The latest bunch of emails were received by Indian students studying across universities in Missouri, Texas, and Nebraska among other states, the daily added.
These emails inform the students that their Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) has been terminated.
SEVIS is a legal document which stores data of an immigrant and proves their legal status, and its termination means that they no longer have valid F-1 non-immigrant status.
It also means that their EAD (Employment Authorisation Document) is no longer valid, and they are no longer authorised to work.
Chand Paravathneni, an immigration lawyer from Texas, is currently handling around 30 such cases, and continues to receive calls from distressed students.
In each case the student’s SEVIS has been revoked for traffic offences such as drinking and driving, shifting lanes or over-speeding.
Paravathneni said it is very unusual to terminate SEVIS for such light offences.
Some students even claimed that they are now being told to self-deport after they have completed the necessary legal formalities like paying the requisite fines for offences committed months ago.
Earlier hundreds of international students in the US were getting emails asking them to self-deport over campus activism.
Immigration attorneys said that students lost their visa even for something as innocuous as sharing a social media post.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Thursday (3) that he has cancelled the visas of more than 300 “lunatics” in a growing crackdown against anti-Israel activism on American university campuses.
Asked to confirm reports of 300 visas stripped, Rubio said: “Maybe more than 300 at this point. We do it every day.”
“Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas,” he told reporters on a visit to Guyana.
“At some point I hope we run out because we’ve gotten rid of them,” Rubio said.
Since president Donald Trump returned to office on January 20, Rubio has moved aggressively against students at the forefront of on-campus anti-Israel protests in response to the Gaza war.
The most high-profile case is Mahmoud Khalil, who led protests at Columbia University in New York.
He was arrested this month and taken to Louisiana ahead of deportation proceedings, despite being a US permanent resident.
Students found to have engaged in such activities have had their visas revoked and have been instructed to leave the country.
Ranjani Srinivasan, a 37-year-old Columbia University student, had her visa revoked for alleged activities supporting Hamas. She self-deported later.
“I’m fearful that even the most low-level political speech or just doing what we all do — like shout into the abyss that is social media — can turn into this dystopian nightmare where somebody is calling you a terrorist sympathiser and making you, literally, fear for your life and your safety,” Srinivasan told The New York Times in an interview.
The Trump administration has responded that the US constitutional protection of free speech does not apply to non-US citizens and has accused activist students of creating a dangerous atmosphere for Jewish students.
Rubio was asked about a new case at Tufts University in Massachusetts where immigration agents arrested a Turkish doctoral student, Rumeysa Ozturk, who had written an opinion piece in a campus newspaper demanding that the university recognise a “genocide” against the Palestinians.
Without commenting directly on the Tufts case, Rubio said: “If you tell us that the reason why you’re coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds, but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalising universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus, we’re not going to give you a visa.”
“If you lie to us and get a visa and then enter the United States, and with that visa, participate in that sort of activity, we’re going to take away your visa,” he said.
Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat from Massachusetts, accused the Trump administration of moving to “abduct students with legal status.”
“This is a horrifying violation of Rumeysa’s constitutional rights to due process and free speech. She must be immediately released,” Pressley said in a statement.
