What The Hell America!

Over the last few days, Trump’s administration has revoked visas for over 400 international students at schools across the US, despite being actively enrolled and eligible. More revocations are likely to follow, as Trump uses federal agencies and even congressional committees to demand information from colleges on more students, such as at Sarah Lawrence College, Barnard College, Pomona College, and Northwestern University. This move marks another step in Trump’s war on pro-Palestine students in the US, coming not even a month after the high-profile detentions of Arab and Muslim pro-Palestine students or alumni such as Mahmoud Khalil or Rumeysah Ozturk. Coupled with a bolstered ICE presence on the US-Mexico border and the end of a DHS policy that would keep ICE off college campuses, this also serves as a move to reinforce his xenophobic, racist and reactionary immigration policies. Today, student activists are on the move and are hosting emergency protests against the Trump administration to condemn this foul, racist attack. We call on all of the student and campus movement to join us.

Such a move is unprecedented within at least the last 30 years on this scale. Prior to the pro-Palestine student detentions, international student status largely was revoked if the student stopped enrolling or withdrew. But Trump campaigned on the promise to deport pro-Palestine students and his Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been faithfully overseeing that project. Trump sees this as an opportunity to scapegoat students from other countries as well, especially countries like China with whom he has begun an earnest trade war.

These racist measures are meant to make people afraid and create a repressive atmosphere that would dampen free speech and break the spirit of pro-Palestine students. But we will not be silent, and we will not give in. As the Trump administration and Israeli occupation work hand in hand to resume the genocide in Gaza and carry out massacres in the West Bank, students should not cease calling out for an end to US aid for the Israeli occupation.

From school to school, university administrators claim that they have not given information nor greenlighted the deportation of these students. However, they have not come out in defense of their students either. Instead, they cling to their so-called neutrality policies, or anti-free speech policies, which prevent faculty, departments, and workers from speaking out against the Trump administration. But the reality is the loss of international students and immigrant students on green cards and visas is a huge blow to education in the US, to free speech, to our communities and to our movements.

We demand that the Trump administration reinstate the visas of these students and that their deportation processes come to a halt. We demand that our universities come out against the Trump administration, deny them information, and do more to protect their foreign-born students and keep them enrolled and on campus. SDS calls for emergency protests today, tomorrow, and in the days ahead, to say no to mass deportations and to the racist attacks on immigrants, on international students, and on a new generation of youth determined to fight for a free Palestine. We say: Stop the deportations, defend free speech, and speak out for Palestine!