If institutions won’t stand up to the Trump administration, then it’s up to academic workers, students, communities, and citizens to stand up for them. Because we have the strongest levers of power over our local institutions.
While international students have become the first target on campuses, it’s important to remember that a portion of faculty (and in particular contingent faculty who are more precarious), administration, and campus service workers are also vulnerable to ICE. But the consequences of these actions could have far-reaching effects. Due process of the law is not for specific groups. We all have it or no one has it. Three Supreme Court Justices laid that out explicitly in a ruling against the administration for accidently deporting an Salvadoran citizen with living legally in the US:
“The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene,” wrote Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
This absolutely is an attempt to silence dissent in the country, especially on college campuses.
This absolutely is authoritarianism.
This absolutely is in line with the current attacks on higher education which were laid out in Project 2025. And in line with the crackdown on student protests before Trump took office.
And what’s worse is that many of our institutions are refusing to stand up for students.
Unions organize in support
Thankfully, unions are already responding:
- Preparing resources for international students to check their visa status and understand what options are available to them.
- Creating safety plans for students and plans for degree completion if a visa is revoked.
- Making demands of campus administration to protect students and calling out administrations that remain silent.
- Forming international worker solidarity committees.
- Organizing protests.
- Creating solidarity funds for international students for legal resources, and aid in emergency flights and housing.
- Bargaining contract language to protect workers from ICE.
- Organizing buddy systems for students who feel unsafe as they move around campus.
- Collaborating with local organizations on Know Your Rights and ICE Watch trainings.
Unions must continue to organize to meet this challenge.
Trump administration cancels student visas and allows kidnapping of students
The administration is relying on a rarely used statute from the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, a product of Cold War paranoia, to deport anyone the government believes “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
It started with the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder, by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on March 8, 2025. Targeted for his leadership in the pro-Palestinian campus occupations at Columbia University, the Trump Administration cites that Khalil has “potentially serious adverse foreign consequences, and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest” and wants him deported despite never being charged with a crime.
On March 25th, Rümeysa Öztürk, a member of SEIU Local 509 and a Turkish national on a student visa, was seized by plainclothes ICE agents outside her home in Somerville, MA and is now being held in custody. A PhD candidate at Tufts University and a member of SEIU Local 509 (a HELU member union), Öztürk co-wrote an op-ed in the school student newspaper asking the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel. She also has not been charged with any crime.
As of this writing, over 1,000 international students have had their visas revoked. The Department of Homeland Security recently created a task force to search the social media histories of foreign students studying in the U.S, nearly 1.5 million students. Some students are choosing to self-deport rather than face detention.
HELU calls for pushing back against this authoritarianism
HELU condemns the revocations of student visas and calls on all of our member organizations to organize to protect students and push back against this authoritarianism.
If your union has international students within it, keeping them safe should be a top priority. Share resources, make plans for safety, and look for ways to put pressure on administration and find community allies to organize with.
If your union does not have international students but they are on campus, connect with them, whether they have a union or not, and find out what they need.
Whether we like it or not, the administration has made our campuses ground zero for this test of executive overreach. And it’s hard to imagine that this will be the last. We have to rise to this moment or higher education will never be the same.
Thanks — a sharp statement. HELU is stepping out to take more leadership in the growing higher ed labor movement.