The visas of a student and four recent graduates of San Francisco State University have been terminated, according to a university statement. The revocations are the latest in a spate of visa cancellations by the Trump administration, which has targeted permanent residents and visa holders in retaliation against their involvement in political organizing and demonstrations. There is no indication that the San Francisco State students were involved in any activism.
San Francisco State is in contact with the graduates, who held F-1 visas, and has made them aware of free legal resources, wrote media liaison Kent Bravo in an email. The university is not aware of any immigration enforcement actions against the affected individuals, Bravo said.
It’s unclear to what extent students and recent graduates at other San Francisco universities have been affected. A spokesperson for UCSF said there had been no visa revocations for anyone there. Media inquiries to the University of San Francisco, UC Law San Francisco and Academy of Art University brought no response.
A professor with the faculty coalition We Are Higher Ed, whose members compile resources for confronting authoritarian threats to academic freedom, said universities must strike a balance between refusing to capitulate and avoiding becoming a target.
“They don’t want to be on the radar. Who wants to be on this radar? At the same time, faculty and students want some signal from their administrators that there is resistance happening,” the professor said. “So, the question is, for administrators: How do you get that message out without putting a big target on your back, and without risking the most vulnerable students?”
The San Francisco Public Press is not identifying the professor, who is a political scientist at a prominent university outside of the Bay Area, because her employer is under federal investigation and she fears retribution against students and graduate workers. She teaches and conducts research related to gender, equity and queer and transgender justice.
When a university is targeted for pursuing research, teaching material or allowing demonstrations related to topics the federal government seeks to suppress, the professor said, repressive actions are not limited to specific individuals.
“The federal government doesn’t care about who is doing the speaking out, they care that there is speaking out,” she said.
The uncertainty about who will be targeted has created a hostile learning environment, the professor said.
“Our international students are panicking because every day there’s sort of a new set of data about more students that are getting these notices,” she said.
Some student and faculty organizers have sought more emphatic responses from administrators. Several emphasized that people who openly support Palestine are the most vulnerable to retribution by the government, but that politically active students are not the only targets.
“We understand that the Trump administration and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are trying to intimidate pro-Palestine protestors, but they’re using sweeping measures against students,” said Max Flynt, a San Francisco State student and activist with the General Union of Palestine Students.
The organization has led campus protests and demanded that state universities denounce the federal government’s immigration enforcement actions against students. Flynt said a recent statement from the university’s president was overly generic and “not a proactive approach to protecting these students.”
At a Civic Center rally that was part of a nationwide series of demonstrations called the Day of Action for Higher Education, San Francisco State students and faculty members echoed the desire for the university to respond more assertively. The demonstrators also denounced class and budget cuts and attacks, such as the visa revocations, on academic freedom.
“We demand that they protect our right to protest,” Ali Noorzad, a history student and student union member at San Francisco State, said at the Civic Center rally.
Other students as well as a member of the faculty union emphasized that they want the university to offer legal aid directly to students and recent graduates rather than connecting them to outside services, and that the university should give assurances it will not facilitate Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Homeland Security access to students targeted for detention or deportation.
Bravo, the university spokesperson, responded that “SFSU does not affirmatively assist federal immigration authorities or grant permission to enter nonpublic areas of the university when officers do not have a judicial warrant or court order to enter.”
Some universities, including San Francisco State, have circulated know-your-rights advisories and instructions for responding to immigration enforcement activity on campus. The San Francisco State memo specifies which parts of the campus are nonpublic and names specific contacts for students and faculty who encounter federal agents.
The faculty member of We Are Higher Ed said staff members who are not administrators are organizing to support and protect international students. Some have compiled legal resources and launched fundraisers, while others have developed detailed plans around students’ and researchers’ travel in case they have trouble re-entering the country. There are also efforts, including at San Francisco State, to ensure that students whose immigration status has been terminated can complete studies toward their degrees. At her university, political science faculty have organized a town hall meeting for students to get responses to their questions and concerns.
“When we’re thinking about university response, we tend to be thinking about what admin does, what presidents do. But faculty have been really loud and clear about what they want and they’re getting louder and clearer. That should also be considered a university response,” the professor said.
Those organizing efforts, she added, have the potential to reshape academia.
“I don’t think higher ed is going to function in the fragmented state it’s been functioning in,” she said. “They’re creating a coalition that I think is going to endure beyond what we’re seeing right now.”
