Seventeen current and former international students from Harvard, UMass Boston and UMass Amherst had their visas revoked amid the Trump administration’s ongoing push to deport international students, according to announcements from the universities’ leadership over the weekend.
Experts say these latest revocations — for reasons that do not appear connected to pro-Palestinian activism — represent a new breakdown in the relationship between the government and higher-ed institutions,
Harvard officials learned of the revocations of three students and two former students “during a routine records review” within the past three days, according to an announcement published Sunday by the school’s International Office.
UMass Boston Chancellor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco wrote in an email Saturday that immigration officials had not notified their schools, either. The Office of Global Programs only discovered that the visas of two UMass Boston students and five others, including recent graduates in training programs, had been revoked after checking the Immigration and Customs Enforcement database.
UMass Amherst officials found out the same way, according to a statement sent to GBH News Sunday from a school spokesperson. “The university has no reason to believe these revocations are connected to campus activism,” the spokesperson said. “To protect the privacy of the students, we are not sharing specifics about their situations.”
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