4,700 students dropped from US SEVIS registry

Visas revoked in US: 4,700 students off the registry

An international student's immigration status in the United States can vanish in a morning. Since Trump took office on Jan. 20, more than 4,700 students have been removed from the SEVIS database maintained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association. That registry is the backbone of the system: if you disappear from it, you cease to exist in administrative terms. According to collected accounts, removal sometimes comes without prior notice, and among the reasons MIT mentions are incivil records, traffic abusa and other similar offenses. The result is a person with years in the country, current enrollment or a signed pre-contract who, overnight, becomes out of status.

What MIT has said about the revoked visas

In March, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sent an email to its international community. The provost's office said the federal government had recently revoked the visas of three students and terminated their immigration status in the federal system, apparently because of incivil records, traffic abusa and other similar offenses. The institute itself closed the note with a sentence that unsettles anyone expecting another explanation: "From what we know so far, these cases do not appear to be related to campus activism."

A 23-year-old Spanish student living in Boston describes it with a detail that captures the mood: "MIT has told all international students to always carry all our documents and to avoid traveling if we can." He adds that Harvard and MIT review visa status daily because visas are being revoked without warning. Some have been in the country for years, with a signed pre-contract with a tech startup, and have had to pack their bags again. That is the case of a young woman who returned to Spain this week after her resident status was revoked.

What the SEVIS system is and what a student visa requires

SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Information System) is the database where student and exchange visa holders are registered. To stay in it, you must meet the conditions: respect employment limits and avoid illegal activities. Debate participants also detail the fine print: according to their accounts, a student visa allows you to work a maximum of 20 hours per week and only in jobs tied to your studies or the campus environment. Translated, in their version: you can wait tables at the place next to campus, not string together shifts on the other side of the city.

Those same accounts warn that driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs — the DUI that immigration offices warn about — leads directly to revocation of residency or the visa. A career path is not immediate either: after graduating, the usual thing, according to those same comments, is to be able to work a couple more years and then need a permanent resident card, the famous Green Card.

Campus activism: a disputed and unconfirmed cause

Here the account splits in two. One reading holds that the revocations are punishment for pro-Palestinian activism on campuses, and recalls, according to one participant's account, the case of a Palestinian doctoral student detained at the immigration office itself on the day of his citizenship interview, after having deleted his social media two years earlier. The other reading, signed by MIT itself, suggests the cases it knows about have nothing to do with the protests. Neither is supported by a public list of reasons, because none exists.

What the thread underlines is the discretion of the terrain: as one participant notes, visa status is granted and withdrawn by a committee of public employees, with rules they themselves interpret. That leaves the affected person, in his description, facing a labyrinth of appeals where the guarantees are not always equal to those of a citizen.

Each country applies its rules to foreigners

The comparison with Europe arises on its own. Some recall that US visa policy has had swings: it was Trump who for the first time allowed countries like Poland to travel without a visa, something Obama had rejected, and it was Biden who tightened the procedure for Spaniards who had traveled to Cuba. Others underline the obvious: those who reside in another country do so as guests and under its rules, without bringing their home legislation with them.

The debate, in any case, is not about sympathies. It is about whether a state can withdraw immigration status without explaining why, without a deadline and without room to defend oneself. A colorful fact commented on in the thread: Elon Musk, today one of the most influential businessmen in the country, arrived on a student visa and his jump into the labor market remains, according to those comments, a confusing file.

What is foreseeable is that removals will keep swelling the registry in the coming weeks, with campuses as the main stage. What is unclear — and may never be clarified — is how many of those 4,700 exits respond to real abusa and how many to a criterion no one has published. MIT has already said the three cases it knows about were not about activism.