Overnight Illegals: Trump’s team just secretly cancelled the immigration status of hundreds of Middle East students in the US, ordering them to self-deport.

The revocations are the next step in Marco Rubio’s “Catch and Revoke” program, modeled after Nixon’s 1972 crackdown on pro-Palestinian students. Even as protests grow, the crackdown is escalating.

Photo: © Photo by Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

Hundreds of international students in the US have been made illegal overnight as Catch and Revoke amps up.

The Trump administration has moved to revoke the immigration status of hundreds of foreign students, further weaponizing little-known provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, including Section 237. The students’ presence would have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences, claim US officials, who are targeting those suspected of being sympathetic with the pro-Palestinian cause. The majority of the students are from the Middle East and from state schools, according to Zeteo’s political reporter Prem Thakker, who broke the story yesterday.

ICE agents have now manually cancelled the students’ F-1 residency I-20 status in the web-based Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), making it illegal for them to remain on US soil and required to leave the US – a shocking display of disregard for the law. (Sevis records may be deemed either cancelled (F or M student) or invalid (J exchange visitor). The news comes after recent statements by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that his office has revoked at least 300 visas.

Rubio is overseeing a “catch and revoke” program to revoke visa of students suspected of supporting Hamas or any other terror groups, using a terrorism by association charge, as reported by Marc Caputo of Axios on March 6. Rubio’s team began using AI and a “whole of government” approach with the Justice Department and Homeland Security (DHS) to review the records of 100,000 people in the SEVIS system. This is the next step of that dragnet. The Rubio blueprint is modeled after a Richard Nixon program Operation Boulder of 1972 which surveilled pro-Palestinian groups. On March 25, Rubio also ordered DHS reviews of the social media accounts of current international students already in US and new applicants (see map below).

At that time, Rubio told reporters his crackdown was justified: “I don’t care what movement you’re involved in. Why would any country in the world allow people to come and disrupt? We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses.”

Live video capture the illegal ICE arrest of Tuft’s student Rumeysa Ozturk’s

© Video: boston25

Escalating Detentions:

The weekend mass revocations follow a wave of street and at-home arrests and detentions of several students and faculty including Tufts University’s graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk by masked and plainclothes US agents over the past two weeks (see our updated list of The Deportables). Video footage of her arrest has gone viral. Some students received this information by email; others only after university leaders checked the SEVIS database of their students.

The revocation of their I-20 status is different from cancelling a student visa; the latter doesn’t mean students have to leave the US, but have to resolve their visa problem. So now DHS officials have revoked their US residency status without disenrolling them – sidestepping the authority of universities responsible for these students. As one immigration monitor put it to Zeteo, the students are now illegal “…through a process that should absolutely not be happening.”

Under SEVIS rules, students who lack immigration status can be fined, detained, and/or deported, and become ineligible for a future US visa. They can be picked up without warning and will not have time to secure their possessions. Frighteningly, they may also be sent to third-party countries, not their country of origin, if they fail to self-deport. Per the rules up to now, in most cases, the termination of your SEVIS record means you must immediately depart the US: there is NO grace period after termination. It’s unclear if anything will change or any grace period will be given to students just learning this news.

© Source: DHS | SEVP

Accruing Unlawful Presence:

You can also be deemed as accruing unlawful presence if your I-20 is terminated or you overstay your grace period: the accrual period begins the day your status is revoked – unless your international student advisor has indicated a grace period for departure from the US. This means students just now targeted by ICE are in worse violation than days ago, without having known their status was revoked. They have to check the SEVIS to know when the change was made: their unlawful accrual clock started ticking right then.

The revocations may also impact spouses or children who have F-2 visas based on their relationship to an F-1 visa holder whose immigration status is revoked. They too, will begin separately accruing days of unlawful presence’ and face a risk of being barred entry to the US.

As of Sunday morning, it remains unclear how many students are impacted; it could be more than 300. A State Department spokesperson told Thakker it claimed broad authority to revoke visas under Section 221 (i), and that they “exercise that authority when information comes to light indicating that a visa holder may no longer be eligible for a visa.” The State Department is not required to notify a student of revocation, claimed the spokesperson, adding “the number of revocations is dynamic.” Thakker’s early review suggests state schools, not the Ivy League campuses, have been targeted in the sweep, though campus protests were heaviest at Columbia, Harvard, and Brown, among Ivies.

New “Intent to Deport” rules

The news also comes alongside a similar Times of India (TOI) report on March 29 that some foreign Indian students in the US got emails from the State Department asking them to self-deport, telling them their F-1 visa was revoked “in accordance with Section 221(i) of the INA, as amended.” It’s unclear from these reports if the Trump administration amended the INA provision beyond what it stated before. DHS’s ICE manages the US Student Exchange Visitor Program, and generally notifies the Bureau of Consular Affairs Visa Office of any changes to student status. The students are to self-deport using the Customs and Border Control app, CBP Home, which has an option labeled “intent to deport,” according to TOI.

Attorneys told TOI a few Indian students got these emails – “for something as innocuous as sharing a social media post.” These aren’t only likes or shares of events related to pro-Palestinian campus activism but “anti-national” posts, stated one attorney. In other words, being critical of US or Trump administration policies may get them flagged. An estimated 1.1 million international students now study in the US, per the latest Open Door report for 2023-2024, and 1.5 million of student visa holders (F-1 or J-1). How many may have self-deported since Trumps return to the White House in an open question.

New registration rules for immigrants without visas takes effect April 11:

A March 12 Trump administration rule is also set to take effect April 11 that requires anyone who enters the US without a visa to register with the federal government after their arrival and carry this registration with them at all times, or face fines or jail time. The administration has issued a new form for immigrants who are not already registered to submit, although many immigrants, including those who lack formal legal status, are already considered registered. Per the new rule, anyone who has submitted one of a laundry list of immigration forms or received one of a list of notices, or have been fingerprinted by the federal government is considered “registered” under the law. They will not need to submit new registration through the forthcoming process. But they have to carry proof of these forms to avoid possible criminal charges. [Forms, notices are: I-94, I-5, I-181, I-184, I-186, I-221, I-221S, I-485, I-551, I-590, I-687, I-691, I-698, I-700, I-766, I-817, I-862, I-863.] Anyone paroled into the US is considered registered even if the period of their parole has expired.

Immigrants who lack these documents may be considered unregistered. This includes people who came into the US without inspection and have had no further contact with the federal government because they have not been unable to seek legal status or even to register -- a population that could number in the millions. It also includes people who applied for TPS or DACA or some other benefits who have not been fingerprinted and whose applications have not been approved. The rules on TPS for certain countries have also changed, so check if you are in any of these categories. (Read about rules for TPS holders in our Deportables report) Bottom line: you must be registered and carry documents on your person at all times.

Who’s on the revoked status student list?

It’s likely that the revocations closely match lists of students that have appeared on the database of Canary Mission, a pro-Zionist doxxing group backed by right-wing conservative donors. It has a long mission of identifying and making public the names and personal information of students, faculty and professionals it deems pro-Palestinian or critical of Israel, broadly lumped into the basket of antisemitism. Canary Mission collaborates as a key intelligence asset for the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs, a very secretive intelligence department largely focused on the US, and the Shin Bet security service. Its big money funders remain largely secret, though a 2018 report by The Forward found that at least $100,000 of its budget came via the San Francisco Jewish Federation and the Helen Diller Family Foundation, a funder of Jewish education.

Canary Mission has used covert surveillance and facial recognition technology of people at campus protests to identify those it suspects of being pro-Palestinian. Its website lists capsule biographies of over 1,000 people it has fingered, broken down by state, region, schools, and departments. It includes social media, text and other messages it views as evidence of antisemitism, purportedly only drawn from open-source postings. It took credit for the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, for example, having pushed that for months.

As reporters digging into Canary Mission have found, once someone’s name appears on their blacklist, it is nearly impossible to get off it or stop the doxxing. It has led to people losing jobs and jeopardized their study. “They’re publishing personal information and holding it over people’s heads,” stated Owen Ray, a contributor to the Massachusetts Daily Collegian on the group’s activities at U Mass in late 2023. “It’s political extortion, it’s dystopian, and it discourages political discourse.” Owen spoke to The Nation reporter James Bramford who’s looked into the dark money and influence ties that laid the ground for the current deportation effort.

Eliyahu Hawila is the software engineer at Stellar Technologies who created the facial recognition program Neshar AI (“the eagle” in Hebrew) to identify masked campus protesters. He openly admits he’s forwarded their names to groups seeking their arrest and deportation. Hawila argues that people can have freedom of speech “…but that doesn’t mean you will escape the consequences of society after you say it.”

Photo: Ted Shaffrey | AP

Neshar AI facial software tool developed to unmask campus protesters

Another pro-Zionist group, Betar, active in the US and globally, is similarly surveilling students and using facial recognition software to do so. It shares the information with ICE and Trump officials. Betar has been labeled a hate, or extremist group, by the Anti-Defamation League (which is notable considering the ADL itself is often critiqued as uncritically biased on Jewish matters, which is denies. The ADL has also voiced support for revoking student visas of pro-Palestinian protesters, per the Associated Press).

On March 29, an AP investigative team led by reporter Adam Geller revealed that a software engineer named Eliyahu Hawila at the private company Stellar Technologies built an AI facial recognition tool called Nesher AI to unmask campus protesters. Its name is derived from the Hebrew word for eagle. The AI tool was developed in the Brooklyn apartment of Betar spokesman Daniel Levy. Stellar Technologies has shared its facial recognition tool with pro-deportation groups.

The tool was used to identify a masked protester at a January rally though only her eyes were visible between her mask and headscarf, the AP was told. She later lost her job, and pro-Zionist activists took credit for that. The names of some students identified by the Neshar AI tool were shared with Trump officials, who were urged to deport them. As Hawila told the AP, he accepts that people can have freedom of speech “…but that doesn’t mean you will escape the consequences of society after you say it.”

Outsourcing AI surveillance to private groups:

The entry of private groups developing AI tools and collaborating with law enforcement reflects a growing outsourcing of cyber surveillance, also noted by the AP. In 2021, Bay Area activists with NorCal and Mijente sued New York-based facial recognition firm Clearview AI, which has a contract with ICE. The lawsuit demanded Clearview AI stop collecting and delete biometric information on California residents, per the AP. Its private national database is seven times larger than the FBIs, and 2000 law enforcement agencies and private companies had sought access to it by then, per the AP. It was sought by agencies “to identify people with dissident views, monitor their associations, and track their speech,” stated the lawsuit.

Like many AI programs, Clearview AI scrapes internet sites to gather facial photos, then identifies individual biometrics and creates a “faceprint” used to identify people. They can include faces of people in backgrounds at public events such as protests. Per the lawsuit, the company offers its services to law enforcement even in cities like San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, that ban its use by local law enforcement.

Some social media firms including Facebook, then-Twitter (now X), and Google, have asked Clearview AI to stop scraping images as it violates their terms of service with users. But US enforcement is lax, say privacy critics, and Trump officials are happily outsourcing government duties to private contractors. Clearview AI also faced a lawsuit in Illinois, and was forced to stop operating in Canada after privacy commissioners demanded it do so. But it’s business is booming.

It’s also not news that the State Department is using artificial intelligence (AI) agents to surveil students, either: Elon Musk and his buddy Marc Andreesen, cofounder of the tech company Palantir, are among DOGE leaders who have advanced the use of AI since January 20th. Palantir’s AI surveillance agents are used by the US Department of Defense as well as Israeli military and are being installed across the federal system. For his part, Marco Rubio declined to tell reporters when asked how he’d gotten the names of students he’s targeted for revocation and if colleges or outside private groups were providing his office or DHS or ICE with the tips.

Mothers Against College Antisemitism, like Better and Canary Mission, serve as local eyes and ears to report to ICE on students and faculty they view as antisemitic

© Photo: The Jewish News

Mothers Against College Antisemitism is on a mission:

Mothers Against College Antisemitism (MACA)is another group that got busy after the Hamas attacks on Israel. Days after Trump issued his Executive Order against antisemitism, MACA’s founder, Elizabeth Rand, notified its 61,000-member Facebook group that it was time to research and file complaints about any students or faculty deemed antisemitic, and provided a link to the ICE tip line to do so. They got to work. In New York, a group named End Jew Hatred has also promoted the ICE tip line.

© Photo: David Dee Delgado |Getty Images

More detained and disappeared – while nationwide protest grow:

This weekend, a nationwide action called Tesla Takedown took place that called for surrounding 277 Tesla showrooms in the US. Over 200 protests took place across the country; some saw thousands of people, some handfuls. The huge turnout demonstrates the ferocity of opposition to Trump’s actions, via DOGE and Elon Musk, and Andreesen and Palantir, to take apart our federal government and crack down on free speech and civil liberties. The names of detained and hunted students popped up on signs held in crowds. ACT UP’s 38th anniversary protest — and reminder of the power of direct action.

A fierce NYC action was organized by ACT UP and Rise and Resist to mark the 38^th anniversary of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, which focused its fury on the cuts to HIV and other public health funds, and also ended up at the Tesla showroom in the West Village. As veteran ACT UP activist Eric Sawyer reminded the crowd, LGBTQ+ and AIDS activists have been here before, and learned to organize in the face of public fears, federal discrimination, bias against gay people, drug users and poor people, and established critical mutual aid groups and institutions. Their success came from direct action: taking to the streets to confront institutions to demand an ethical federal response to AIDS.

Trump’s actions are now threatening to cause a resurgence of the US and global epidemic, since he’s just cut HIV prevention and research monies, and gutted health institutions. While we may not have figured out the most effective strategies against the unfolding Trump coup, the fight is familiar, and we know how to organize. Staying silent is not an option. Speak out, and reach out to others impacted in your community, he urged people. ACT UP was a coalition that united many under an umbrella of community survival. We need that now.

Nationwide Acts of Resistance – Week of March 29-April 4, 2025

© Map: K. Starling, creator, We The People, Dissent

The current detainees:

More students have been detained in recent days. A University of Carlson School of Management graduate student was detained on March 27 by ICE at an off-campus residence, per UMN’s President Rebecca Cunningham, who issued a public statement saying the school had no prior knowledge of the arrest and did not share any information with federal authorities it happened. School privacy rules prevent it from naming the student, but the school is protesting and doing follow-up. The arrest follows a protest by 170 immigrant right’s supporters at the Minnesota State Capitol on March 16^th to protest HF-16, a proposed anti-immigrant bill that would oulaw sanctuary-city ordinances in Minnesota’s cities and counties.

(New cases of non-students detained by ICE have also surfaced, including a Miami resident Eduardo Nunez Gonzales, detained March 20 and now transferred to an ICE facility in New Mexico. I’ll keep updating our list of Deportables. ICE has also arrested US citizens, only to realize their error, as in the recent case of Julio Noriega.)

International students now detained in ICE facilities include: Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia, Bhadar Kahn Suriat Georgetown University, Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts, Alireza Doroudi at the University of Alabama. Right now, two other students have filed lawsuits to prevent ICE from arresting, detaining and deporting them: Momoudou Taal at Cornell University, long targeted by Betar, and Columbia junior Yunseo Cheung. It’s likely they’ve had their I-20’s cancelled now, too, unless their proactive lawsuits prevent that ICE action.

Columbia student Ranjani Srinivasan fled to Canada to barely escape an ICE dragnet. Dr. Rasha Alawieh at Brown Medicine, an H-1B visa holder, was denied entry and deported, and is accused of sympathies with Hezbollah.

© Photo: Jay W. Walker

Fighting back:

On the positive front, lawyers for the students have moved quickly to demand release of their clients, and temporary restaining orders to prevent their removal until their cases are heard and resolves. That’s where things stand with Khalil and Suri. Already, university leaders and lawyers from groups including the ACLU, Democracy Forward, and the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) are discussing legal strategies. Some hope class action lawsuits can be filed on behalf of international students and faculty being targeted.

As protesters at marches point out, these attacks are an early step toward fuller suppression of our Constitutional guarantees of free speech and dissent. Foreign students may be considered easier targets, but they warn that citizens who dissent may be next. Dehumanization and deportation are early steps of past fascist regimes, including Germany under Hitler. Trump’s resurrection of the Alien Enemies Act is further evidence of the goal of criminalizing those deemed critics under a pastiche of law.

Take Action:

The use of the INA provisions shows how far Trump’s team will go to defy the rule of law and engage in lawless or secret arrests, detentions and deportations of those it views as enemies of Trump policies – now broadened to be enemies of the US and/or enemies of Israel. The role of Israel’s secret services, working with Canary Mission or Betar and ICE, also reveal other actors, players, and money behind Catch and Revoke, and calls for Congressional hearings into this. All of it demands that we speak out loudly in opposition to these police state actions, in support of academic freedom, and continue taking to the streets to manifest our right to free speech and political dissent.

Everyone is urged to contact your state and local representatives to share your concerns, and contact university leaders to urge them to do more to protect all students and faculty.

Call to Action: 1 million people in the streets April 5:

Coming up: A major national act of resistance on April 5 calling for a million people to turn out for marches and rallies in Washington DC, and all 50 states. It’s organized by a coalition that includes 50501, Indivisible, the Women’s March, and local groups in states and cities. In NYC, Rise and Resist keeps turning up the pressure with weekly Tuesday noon demonstrations at Fox News, and weekends at Tesla showrooms, and more. Check out We The People’s Substack for the unfolding resistance in all states. We’re also keeping track of this and the legal and activist pushback to the deportation effort at our campaign.

Stay Tuned. - AC