Visa and immigration policy: The events of March and April 2025

ICE sought to rapidly deport protestors and activists

Federal moves against international students began in March 2025 with several arrests of individuals involved in pro-Palestinian campus activism, which the Trump administration claimed was indissolubly linked to the occupation of campus spaces and buildings, antisemitic harassment, and sympathy for terrorism perpetrated by Hamas.¹ Two high-profile cases were those of Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, neither of whom were accused of criminal activity.

On March 8, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained Khalil, a US permanent resident who had just completed a master’s degree at Columbia University, and transferred him to a facility in Louisiana with the intent to rapidly deport him. ICE claimed that his pro-Palestinian activities posed adverse foreign policy consequences, thus permitting his deportation despite his legal presence in the US. Although he was released three months later, he remains at risk of deportation.²

Agents in plain clothes seized Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk off the street on March 25 after the State Department revoked her F-1 student visa. Öztürk is believed to have become a target solely because of an opinion piece she wrote for the student newspaper at Tufts. She was released after two months, and in February 2026 an immigration judge ruled that there were no grounds to deport her.³

When the press asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio about Öztürk two days after her arrest, he defended the deportation of individuals associated with “destabilizing” activities and affirmed that at least 300 student and visitor visas had been revoked to that point. He also falsely indicated that anyone with a revoked visa would no longer be in the country legally.⁴

ICE terminated thousands of students’ SEVIS records without warning

By early April 2025, students and universities became aware that some records in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)-operated Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) affirming international students’ legal status were being systematically changed to a “terminated” status without notice or a clear reason. Some students also began receiving notices their visas had been revoked and that they should leave the country,⁵ and a few were detained.⁶ As universities, journalists, and lawyers scrambled to ascertain the scope and implications of these actions, DHS reported to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees on April 10 that 4,763 students’ SEVIS status had been terminated to that date.⁷

This situation unfolded in the context of other developments in visa and immigration enforcement that caused widespread alarm. Notably, a number of visitors and US permanent residents were detained at the border and held for days or weeks before being released.⁸ The most notorious cases involved individuals supposedly connected with foreign gangs being transferred to a prison in El Salvador where they faced brutal conditions and the loss of legal recourse.⁹ Such developments raised the specter that the government was targeting individuals haphazardly, flagrantly violating due process, willing to disregard judicial orders, and deliberately using disproportionate, harsh, and even violent measures to create an atmosphere of fear that pressured people to “self-deport.”

Documents

Cite this resource

AIP Policy Research, “The events of March and April 2025,” Visa and immigration policy guide, American Institute of Physics, 2026, https://www.aip.org/research/visa-immigration/march-april-2025.

Last updated

March 4, 2026