The Trump administration continues to amp up their targeted attacks on international student visa-holders as part of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s “Catch and Revoke” program targeting pro-Palestine activists. Several foreign students have been arrested and detained, pulled off the sidewalk by plainclothes agents, and driven away in unmarked vehicles, while others are hiding as their court cases play out. 

Rubio said Thursday he may have revoked more than 300 visas at this point. “We do it every day,” Rubio said, as reported by The Washington Post’s John Hudson. “Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas.” 

Axios reports that the Trump administration is discussing plans to prohibit certain colleges from enrolling foreign students if they think that university has too many “pro-Hamas” students. The administration has been focusing on students who have protested or spoken out against Israel’s war in Gaza. Rubio has declared that these students’ “presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

In addition to Trump’s executive order to “combat antisemitism,” the education department has sent letters to 60 universities about their concerns of “anti-Jewish racism.” The administration is also proposing having immigrants applying for green cards or citizenship disclose their social media handles.

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” Trump said in a statement after taking office in January. “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

Civil rights groups have adamantly protested the Trump administration’s efforts to deport student activists, saying the efforts are unconstitutional and a grave infringement on free speech. Jewish Voices for Peace has been actively protesting the multiple detainments, and nearly hundred people were arrested at a Trump Tower protest in New York on March 13. 

The ACLU and Democracy Forward are among the organizations suing the Trump administration. “The president’s anticipated invocation of wartime authority — which is not needed to conduct lawful immigration enforcement operations — is the latest step in an accelerating authoritarian playbook,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement. “From improperly apprehending American citizens, to violating the ability of communities to peacefully worship, to now improperly trying to invoke a law that is responsible for some of our nation’s most shameful actions, this administration’s immigration agenda is as lawless as it is harmful.”

Here’s a look at the students whom the Trump administration has detained or sought to detain, their current immigration status, where they are now, and what will happen to them next.

Plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers arrested Mahmoud Khalil on March 8 at his New York City apartment as his wife, who is eight months pregnant, recorded the incident on her phone. Khalil, 30, was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and finished his graduate degree at Columbia University in December 2024. While there, he acted as the lead negotiator in discussions with university administrators and student protestors during pro-Palestine protests and encampments last year. Khalil, whose wife is American, was a permanent resident with a green card at the time of his arrest. Agents told his lawyer his green card and student visa were revoked by the State Department, and they placed him in an unmarked car and drove away. 

After his arrest, Khalil was moved to an ICE detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, where he is currently still in custody. U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman has temporarily barred the Trump administration from deporting Khalil, and said his case should be transferred to New Jersey. Trump claimed on Truth Social that Khalil is a “radical foreign pro-Hamas student” but has not released any evidence to back up his claim. Free speech protests have erupted across the country in response to Khalil’s detention.

“The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent,” Khalil wrote in a letter dictated over the phone from ICE detention in Louisiana. “Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all. Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.”

Ranjani Srinivasan

The day before Khalil was detained, federal immigration agents went to the apartment of Columbia University student Ranjani Srinivasan. Srinivasan, a graduate student studying architecture, had moved to the U.S. from India as a Fulbright scholar in 2016. She did not answer the door when agents arrived, as she spoke with someone from the school’s international student office about the notice she’d received that her student visa had been revoked. 

A fearful Srinivasan fled to Canada, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted security footage of her with her suitcase at LaGuardia airport. “It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live & study in the United States of America,” Noem wrote on X. “When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked and you should not be in this country.”

The State Department has not provided evidence backing Noem’s claims that Srinivasan, 37, was involved in activities supporting Hamas. 

“I’m fearful that even the most low-level political speech or just doing what we all do — like shout into the abyss that is social media — can turn into this dystopian nightmare,” Srinivasan told The New York Times, “where somebody is calling you a terrorist sympathizer and making you, literally, fear for your life and your safety.”

Yunseo Chung

Yunseo Chung is a permanent resident of the U.S. who has lived here since she was seven years old, when her family emigrated here from South Korea. The high school valedictorian and Barnard College student was one of nine pro-Palestine protestors arrested on Columbia’s campus during a sit-in on March 5. Following the arrest, ICE agents searched Chung’s dorm room and her parents’ home and informed her lawyer that Rubio had revoked her permanent resident status.

On Monday, Chung responded by filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration, citing a breach of her First Amendment rights. “ICE’s shocking actions against Ms. Chung form part of a larger pattern of attempted U.S. government repression of constitutionally protected protest activity and other forms of speech,” reads the lawsuit. “Ms. Chung is now at active risk of being put in immigration detention and deported from the only country she has ever known.”

This past Tuesday, a judge granted the 21-year-old a temporary restraining order against the government, stopping the Trump administration from deporting her. “After the constant dread in the back of my mind over the past few weeks, this decision feels like a million pounds off of my chest,” Chung said in a statement to The Guardian. She remains in an undisclosed location.

Momodou Taal

Cornell University Ph.D student and pro-Palestine activist Momodou Taal’s F-1 student visa was revoked on March 14 and he is facing deportation. Taal, a 31-year-old dual U.K. and Gambian citizen, is among three Cornell plaintiffs suing the Trump administration for “government retaliation” against the executive orders they say violate their First and Fifth Amendment rights. Taal is currently in hiding as his case plays out in federal court.

“You don’t repress to this level when you’re in a position of strength,” Taal said in an interview with The Intercept. “When you have to quell speech, it means that you are realizing that the outside world or public opinion is swaying in one direction. So I think now would not be the time to be afraid. I know it’s a very frightening moment, but for me, this is the time to double down.”

Badar Khan Suri

On March 17, Badar Khan Suri was detained by masked ICE agents outside his home in Arlington, Virginia. The Indian national and Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow was told the government was revoking his visa for foreign policy reasons.

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin posted on X that Suri was “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media” and claimed that he had “close connections to a known or suspected terrorist.” 

Suri has no criminal record and has not been charged with any crime. His wife is a U.S. citizen of Palestinian heritage. His deportation has been halted while his case is reviewed in court, and he’s currently being held in Texas.

“Dr. Suri was granted a visa to enter the United States to continue his doctoral research on peacebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan at the Center for Muslim Christian Understanding,” the dean of Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service wrote in a statement. “During his time on campus, I am not aware that Dr. Suri has engaged in any illegal activity, nor has he posed a threat to the security of our campus. He has been focused on completing his research. As Dean, I am deeply troubled by the chilling effect such events could have on freedom of expression on this campus, which is, of course, at the very core of our mission.”

Rumeysa Ozturk

Tufts University student and Fulbright Scholar Rumeysa Ozturk was alone and on her way to meet friends to break her Ramadan fast at an Iftar dinner when she was approached by six plainclothes officers, some of whom were partially masked. Security camera footage shows the agents apprehending the 30-year-old Turkish national outside of her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, on March 25, and placing her in a black SUV.

Despite a federal judge ordering the government not to move her out of Massachusetts without 48 hour notice, Ozturk was moved to a processing facility in Louisiana. In March of last year, Ozturk co-wrote an op-ed for the Tufts student newspaper demanding that the university “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and divest from companies with ties to Israel.

McLaughlin went on X to, once again, claim without evidence that Ozturk has engaged in activities supporting Hamas. “A visa is a privilege not a right,” she wrote.

Alireza Doroudi

ICE has also detained Alireza Doroudi, an Iranian Ph.D. student researching mechanical engineering at the University of Alabama. The university’s paper broke the news that the doctoral student was arrested at his home early Tuesday morning. Doroudi is currently being held in a rural Alabama jail and has retained Louisiana immigration attorney David Rozas as his counsel. Rozas told ABC News Doroudi has “not been arrested for any crime, nor has he participated in any anti-government protests.”

“The University of Alabama recently learned that a doctoral student has been detained off campus by federal immigration authorities,” Doroudi’s university said in a statement. “Federal privacy laws limit what can be shared about an individual student.”