Visa and immigration policy: Deportation threats
On April 28, 2025, Todd Lyons, acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), released a video commemorating the 100-day mark in the second Trump administration. He boasted that ICE had already arrested some 65,000 “criminal aliens and immigration violators.” At that moment, ICE had identified thousands of international students though what was informally called the “Student Criminal Alien Initiative,” and had taken steps to compel them to leave the country.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Early in the second Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department collaborated to identify and revoke the visas of international students whose presence in the United States they deemed to be detrimental to the country’s interests. A number of students were detained and rushed toward deportation, and universities soon discovered that, in a government database used to verify international students’ continued enrollment, thousands of students were no longer in good standing.
These developments sparked a wave of lawsuits that brought to the fore a complicated web of issues, such as: What do visas actually do? Under what circumstances can they be revoked? What happens when they are revoked? How can someone lose one’s “status” as a student even if still enrolled? When is someone legally obligated to leave the US? How discretionary are government officials’ discretionary authorities? What obligation does the government have to announce policy changes and to notify people of a change in their legal status? Do non-citizens have the same rights as citizens?
The legal questions at play entailed both fundamental principles of American justice as well as intricate interpretations of arcane and ambiguous statutes. Some decisions from the courts came so quickly and in such great number that the government quickly retreated from its most expansive moves, but questions about the scope of its powers remain in litigation. This section steps through the history of what has happened and the legal and policy issues that have been at play.
Cite this resource
AIP Policy Research, “Deportation threats,” Visa and immigration policy guide, American Institute of Physics, 2026, https://www.aip.org/research/visa-immigration/deportation-threats.
Last updated
March 7, 2026