The student visas of five individuals currently attending or recently graduated from Harvard University have been revoked, according to Harvard.

It’s one of more than a dozen higher education institutions that is actively tracking and reporting the number of affiliated people who have been targeted by President Donald Trump’s administration in recent weeks.

These incidents are part of what appears to be mass targeting of international students by Trump’s administration over alleged violations of their visa or green card conditions, ranging from minor legal infractions to participating in demonstrations. In other cases, the reason for the revocation is unknown or has not been provided by the administration.

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Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, the State Department has revoked over 300 student visas nationwide, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on March 27.

Based on non-exhaustive tallies provided by the respective HEIs, here are some of the colleges and universities that have been impacted.

PHOTO: A person runs past Elliot House at Harvard University, March 17, 2025, in Cambridge, Mass. (Scott Eisen/Getty Images)

MORE: What we know about the foreign college students targeted for deportation

Arizona State University: 8

Arizona State University has reported at least eight students impacted by the Trump administration’s recent spate of student visa revocations.

Central Michigan University: 4

Four current and former students at Central Michigan University have had their visas revoked, according to the school.

Colorado State University: 6

Colorado State University reported six impacted students.

Harvard University: 5

Harvard reported that three students and two recent graduates had their student visas revoked.

Kent State University: 3

Kent has reported three individuals affected by student visa revocations to date.

PHOTO: Solidarity Protests With Columbia University Spread To Boston-Area Schools (Scott Eisen/Getty Images)

MORE: Trump administration reviewing alleged antisemitism at Harvard University

Minnesota State University: 5

Five students enrolled at Minnesota State University have reportedly been impacted.

North Carolina State: 2

Two international students from North Carolina State had their student visas revoked, the school stated.

Ohio State University: 5

Ohio State reported five individuals impacted by the recent crackdown.

Stanford University: 6

Stanford has said that four current students and two recent grads have had their student visas revoked.

University of California system: Unknown

Although an estimate has not yet been provided, the University of California system of schools has stated that its campuses — including the University of California Los Angeles, UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, UC Davis and UC Irvine — have been impacted.

University of Cincinnati: Unknown

The University of Cincinnati has reported a “small number” of impacted international students.

University of Colorado: 2

The University of Colorado reports two students who have been affected in recent weeks.

University of Kentucky: Unknown

The University of Kentucky has shared that a “small number” of its student body has been impacted.

University of Massachusetts Amherst: 5

UMass Amherst reported that five of its students have recently had their visas revoked.

University of Michigan: 4

U-M reported that four of its international students have been impacted in recent weeks.

University of Nevada, Las Vegas: 4

Four students at UNLV have been impacted by the recent emphasis on student visa revocations, according to the school.

University of Oregon: 1

A student enrolled at the University of Oregon was also affected, according to the school.

Harvard, UCLA, Stanford among schools across US reporting student visa revocations originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

AI-assisted summary The U.S. State Department has suspended processing passport applications with a gender marker different from the applicant’s biological sex.

This policy change follows a recent executive order mandating federal recognition of only two sexes, male and female, as unchangeable.

Many transgender, nonbinary, and intersex individuals rely on passports as primary identification, and this policy change raises concerns about discrimination and access to essential services.

It’s been almost eight weeks since Texas-based Patrick sent in his passport application. There has been no word on whether it’ll be approved or not. Meanwhile, some of his most vital documents are being held by the government.

He and his wife married in 2022, and both applied for new passports so they could finally take the honeymoon they postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. While his wife’s passport was approved in about a week, Patrick received a letter that his application was put on hold.

Sent in with his application – which he double-checked and had proofread by friends – was his birth certificate and gender change court order that stated his identity as male. “It’s exhausting. I’m disappointed. I’m frustrated,” he told USA TODAY. Some sources are identified by first name only out of safety and privacy concerns.

Among President Donald Trump’s wave of executive orders when he assumed office was for the federal government to “recognize only two sexes, male and female,” and that “these sexes are not changeable.” Government agencies, including the Department of State, are enforcing the policy for all government-issued identification documents like visas, passports, and Global Entry cards.

Trump order recognizes only two sexes: Advocates call it ‘cruel,’ ‘lawless.’

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Not only does this put Patrick’s honeymoon on indefinite hold, but it also generates doubts and fear. “In the event I need to seek asylum somewhere, I can’t leave the country,” he said. “I feel like I’m stuck here.”

Patrick is one of many transgender, nonbinary and intersex Americans facing uncertainty not only about the status of their passports under the new policy but also about the broader implications this administration may have on their rights and futures.

“If our gender markers don’t match who we are, then it’s going to cause us problems, from housing from renting cars to renting hotel rooms to buying cars to buying houses, everything, you name it,” said Mikaela, a transgender woman in Texas whose passport also has yet to be approved after several weeks. “There’s so much more to it in every element that people just don’t think about.”

What does the new policy mean for passports?

“In line with that Order, the Department’s issuance of U.S. passports will reflect the individual’s biological sex as defined in the Executive Order,” a State Department spokesperson told USA TODAY in an email. It has suspended the processing and issuing of all applications “seeking a different sex marker than that defined by the terms in the Executive Order,” including those requesting a binary gender change or the “X” gender marker.

Since Transgender Day of Visibility in 2022, this third gender option – which has a long worldwide history across cultures – has been available for those who neither identify as male nor female. Previously, applicants were able to self-select male, female, or the “X” gender marker during the application process without having to provide medical documentation – which also removed the barrier for those whose birth certificates don’t align with their gender identity.

“I can almost say with a certainty that this will not go unchallenged by LGBTQ+ advocates,” said Carl Charles, senior attorney at LGBTQ+-focused civil rights organization Lambda Legal.

What happens to those who already applied for a passport?

“I think folks should think very carefully about sending in an application at this point if they are in the category of requesting an ‘X’ gender marker or binary gender change,” Charles added.

With applications suspended, many people have said their important documents, including old passports, are still in the hands of the passport offices. It’s unknown whether their documents will be returned, and for now, they can’t travel internationally. The State Department said updates will be posted on its website “as soon as we are able.”

Charles recommends people continue to check the status of their applications online and stay connected to legal advocacy groups for any updates. “Folks are just, unfortunately, in a waiting game and in a limbo,” he said. “There’s not much to do.”

“I think for everybody else who’s not trans or not nonbinary or not having to struggle with this, to remember that if it’s not affecting you, there’s a word for that and it’s privileged,” Patrick said. “They’re blessed to not have to stress about such basic rights to wonder whether or not my passport or an ID document is going to go through and for the people just to maybe give us a little more grace right now as we navigate these tricky waters.”

‘Robbing of agency’

“There’s all kinds of related consequences to this one big action,” Charles said. “And that’s to say nothing of the emotional and sort of mental health impact on something like this to trans people who comprise less than 1% of the U.S. population and, still, even though that is the case, experience really incredibly outsized numbers of discrimination of employment access to healthcare and education. This new development compounds what trans people have experienced.”

The executive order marks another step in the efforts to dismantle LGBTQ+ rights. The new policy impacts the more than 2 million Americans who identify as transgender or nonbinary, according to the Human Rights Campaign, and the approximately 5.6 million residents who are born intersex.

For many transgender individuals, a passport serves as their primary form of identification, especially when other documents (in the often lengthy and challenging gender change process) are held up. The lack of a passport that reflects their new identity becomes another safety concern and barrier to essential services and travel in a country where they already frequently feel endangered.

“I know how proud quite a number of people are of the names and identities, and how dehumanizing and robbing of agency it is,” said Violet, a transgender woman who had mailed in their passport application on Jan. 16, paying extra for two-day shipping, as part of changing all of her documents from male to female. As of Monday, the status of her application remains processing.

“In my mind, this isn’t about just simply holding people’s stuff up in transit,” she said. “It’s not a simple transfer of administration. It’s targeting specific groups and doing specific things with deliberate intentions.”

On January 31, US President Donald Trump expanded his controversial travel ban to include six additional countries, including my home country, Eritrea.

Reportedly, Eritrea was included in the ban for three reasons: the Eritrean government’s lack of cooperation with the US in its efforts to remove Eritrean nationals living in the country without proper documentation; widespread visa overstays by Eritrean nationals; and the African country’s inability to comply with the US information-sharing criteria on matters of national security and safety.

The decision was a devastating blow for thousands of already beleaguered Eritreans. Without the possibility of seeking safety in the US, they are now left to make an impossible choice between embarking on a deadly journey towards an unwelcoming Europe, facing gross abuses in Sudan, shuttered opportunities in Ethiopia, or tolerating what passes for life in the open-air prison that is Eritrea.

By expanding its travel ban to include Eritrean nationals, the US not only condemned thousands of innocent people to a life of oppression, uncertainty and pain, but it also signalled that it would do nothing to censor their oppressors.

Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf said the ban would see the United States suspend the issuance of visas that can lead to permanent residency for nationals of affected countries, but would not hinder the issuance of non-immigrant visas, such as those given to tourists, students and businesspeople.

Eritrea does not issue passports to its citizens except for in extraordinary circumstances, and most Eritreans who manage to leave the country only have refugee travel documents. This means there is almost no chance for them to score a non-immigrant visa and enter the US.

The perpetrators of repression in Eritrea, who hold official passports, however, will almost certainly be unaffected by the new travel restrictions. Politicians, military leaders and other supporters of the regime who are wreaking havoc in the country will continue to travel to the US whenever they need and want to conduct seminars, attend meetings, give music concerts, collect donations and even enjoy holidays. The new travel ban also spares holders of diplomatic passports, which means the Eritrean diplomats will be allowed to continue visiting the US and delivering their vicious propaganda. Ordinary Eritreans who have been forced to escape their homes due to the regime’s flawed policies, however, will continue to suffer.

In response to the travel ban, the Eritrean Ministry of Information issued a statement, indicating that while they have no problem with the newly introduced travel restrictions on their citizens, they are disappointed with the reasoning behind them.

The government of Eritrea “has consistently opposed ‘automatic asylum’ and other misguided measures invoked by certain countries in the past 20 years for ulterior reasons of ‘strategic depopulation’ against Eritrea”, the statement said, adding that it had lodged protests against previous US administrations that followed similar asylum policies. But it nevertheless criticised the Trump administration’s travel ban, only because the ban does not appear to stem from the concerns repeatedly voiced by the Eritrean government, and hence sends a “negative signal” to the Eritrean leadership.

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The statement all-but-proved that the Eritrean government has no intention of negotiating with the US government to help reinstate its citizens’ right to travel and immigrate to the US.

Now, many Eritrean citizens’ only hope is that regional powers who have strong relations with the Trump administration, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, will intervene to help Eritreans, as they have previously done by helping lift UN sanctions on Eritrea. Without such help, Eritreans will continue to be punished both by their own government and the governments of countries that they seek asylum in, simply for the misfortune of being born in Eritrea.

Escaping repression, not posing a threat

Trump’s travel ban implies that Eritrean immigrants pose a threat to the US government and its people. This, of course, could not be further from the truth. Over the years, Eritrean immigrants made invaluable contributions to American society.

Many Eritrean-American artists made significant contributions to the US cultural scene, such as Tiffany Haddish and Nipsey Hussle, whose fathers fled from war and settled in the US. Olympian medalist and “one of the most accomplished distance runners in American history,” Mebrahtom “Meb” Kiflezghi, was born in Eritrea to Eritrean parents. Haben Girma, the first deaf and blind person to graduate from Harvard, who was named “White House Champion of Change” by President Obama, was born to Eritrean parents who fled war. The list of influential Americans of Eritrean origin also includes Dr Haile Debas, who was once described as a “one person transformer for global health in California, at UCSF, in America, and around the world.” Colorado Congressman Joe Neguse, who has condemned the travel ban, is also the son of Eritrean immigrants.

One may argue that while Eritrean immigrants are clearly not a threat to the US, they should still be banned because they ignore US laws by overwhelmingly overstaying their visas. It is true that Eritrean immigrants are more likely than immigrants from other nations to violate their visa conditions: Overall only 1.9 percent of visitors to the US overstay their visas, while the rate among Eritrean visitors is 24 percent. But before making a judgement, it is necessary to ask some important questions: Who are these Eritreans who have overstayed their visas and why did they do so?

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I can easily provide examples: I overstayed my visa. My sister, who is now a registered nurse in California, did, too. My younger brother, who is now a software engineer in the Silicon Valley, also did the same. Why did we overstay? Because we had no other option. Staying in the US was our only chance to escape repression. If we returned home when our visas expired, we’d be thrown into a dungeon. The fact that most Eritreans who overstay their visas are eventually granted asylum should be seen as confirmation that they have legitimate reasons to do so.

Caught up in indefinite transit

Since 2010, 17,564 Eritreans have resettled in the US as refugees according to the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.

As mentioned before, the Eritrean state rarely issues passports to its citizens and allows them to leave the country officially. As a result, almost all Eritreans who were lucky enough to resettle in the US have many family members who have been stranded in Eritrea. The dreams of all these people of one day reuniting with their relatives in the US have been crushed by the Trump administration’s new extended travel ban.

The 2018 peace deal with Ethiopia and the resulting easing of border restrictions had renewed many Eritreans’ hopes for leaving the country and joining their loved ones in the West. The US’s very long and convoluted vetting process for issuing family reunification visas, however, made this almost impossible for many. As the US embassy in Asmara stopped issuing immigrant visas, many who want to immigrate to the US moved to neighbouring countries to complete the process. Now, they are stranded in limbo indefinitely, as they do not want to return to Eritrea and continue living under unbearable oppression.

Trump’s travel ban also devastated Eritrean nationals in the US, like me, who were hoping to be reunited with their family members. As they do not have a government acting on their behalf and fighting for their rights, they do not know where to seek help. Following the announcement of the extended ban, I have no idea when and if I will be able to see my mother, who is still in Eritrea, again.

While facing tremendous external challenges, the Eritrean regime seems to care very little about improving conditions inside the country, something that’s been the case for a very long time. Eritreans continue to flee their country at an alarming rate. Those left in the country face mounting challenges with little hope for improvement or redress.

I thought I had escaped from a repressive regime that retaliates against families for others’ perceived wrongdoing. Yet, the sad, familiar story has followed me and many of my countrymen/women. Now I must figure out how to explain to my daughter and nieces – who are Americans – why their government banned them from seeing their grandparents

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Section 1 Content

​ACE and 15 other higher education associations have requested an urgent briefing from the departments of State and Homeland Security (DHS), following widespread reports that international students are being stripped of their visas and ordered to leave the country with little or no warning.In an April 4 letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, the associations cited growing concern over visa cancellations that appear to be tied to social media activity, political expression, or minor infractions.

“We seek clarity amidst reports that student visas are being revoked and records are being terminated in the Student Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) without additional information being shared with the institutions those students attend,” wrote ACE President Ted Mitchell on behalf of the groups. Affected students are being left in legal limbo with institutions scrambling to respond.

“We support the need for the federal government to safeguard national security, including vetting visas and overseeing the process for deciding who should be allowed to enter and remain in the country and under what terms,” the letter continued. “Recent actions have contributed to uncertainty and impedes the ability of our institutions to best advise international students and scholars. It is important institutions are in a position to reassure international students so they can continue to make exceptional contributions to their campuses, communities, and the nation.”

The visa revocations have been gaining national attention for weeks, with campuses, legal experts, and advocacy groups raising alarm. The New York Times highlighted the higher education community’s concerns and noted that ACE’s letter calls for greater transparency and communication from federal agencies.

Over the past several weeks, more than 300 student and visitor visas have been revoked, according to Secretary Rubio. In some cases, the revocations appear to be tied to students’ participation in campus protests or social media activity, while in others, visa status was canceled based on past infractions as minor as traffic violations. These actions are likely related to the Jan. 20 executive order, “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats.”

The scope of the actions is sweeping and still unfolding. In California alone, at least six University of California campuses have reported student visa terminations, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Boston Globe reported over the weekend that cases also have emerged at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst), University of Oregon, University of Kentucky, Arizona State University, University of Colorado, and others.

In many cases, students learned their visas were revoked only after receiving abrupt emails or text messages ordering them to self-deport—sometimes after being detained. One student enrolled at the University of California San Diego was reportedly detained at the border, denied entry to the country, and deported without warning. And in many cases, universities only learned of the visa terminations by checking SEVIS.

Legal experts note that international students have constitutional protections, including First Amendment rights—but visa status can still be revoked unilaterally. Appeals are rare and seldom successful, according to The New York Times. But the policy shift marks a sharp break from past practice, where students whose visas were canceled could typically remain in the U.S. to finish their studies. Under the Trump administration, both visa and SEVIS status are being terminated, forcing immediate departure.

At UMass Amherst, Chancellor Javier Reyes said the revocations took place “under unclear circumstances“ and announced the university has established an Angel Fund to assist students with legal and living expenses.

In their letter, the higher education associations emphasized that international students contribute $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy annually and support more than 375,000 American jobs. They play a vital role in advancing global scholarship and strengthening U.S. diplomacy.

ACE and its partners will continue to push for a meeting with State and DHS officials to clarify the administration’s approach, understand how terms like “support for terrorism” are being defined, and explore ways to protect national security without undermining U.S. higher education.