Marco Rubio says 300 student visas have been revoked, including detentions at Tufts, Columbia and more

Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated Thursday that 300 pupil visas have been revoked, asserting “we’ve a proper” to rescind the visas of scholars who take part in campus protests, regardless of questions on due course of and First Modification objections. 

“In case you apply for a visa to enter america and be a pupil, and also you inform us that the rationale why you are coming to america isn’t just since you need to write op-eds, however since you need to take part in actions which are concerned in doing issues like vandalizing universities, harassing college students, taking on buildings, making a ruckus, we’re not going to provide you a visa,” Rubio stated. “In case you misinform us and get a visa then enter america, and with that visa, take part in that kind of exercise, we’ll take away your visa.” 

Rubio continued that if a pupil then misplaced his or her visa, “you are now not legally in america. And we’ve a proper, like each nation on the earth has a proper, to take away you from our nation.” 

Rubio stated that a minimum of 300 college students had their visas revoked. “We do it daily. Each time I discover one in all these lunatics, I take away their visa,” he stated. 

It is unclear if these college students had been notified of the revocations upfront. 

Rubio’s remarks got here in response to a query about Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish nationwide who was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Massachusetts on Tuesday. 

A Division of Homeland Safety spokesperson stated Ozturk had “engaged in actions in assist of Hamas,” however didn’t present particulars about her alleged actions. Ozturk was one in all 4 college college students who was listed because the creator of a March 2024 campus newspaper opinion piece urging Tufts to undertake resolutions from the coed authorities to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and “divest from corporations with direct or oblique ties to Israel.” That article doesn’t point out Hamas.

Ozturk is at the moment being held at a federal detention facility in Louisiana. 

The college stated in a press release that she had been coming back from a Ramadan iftar dinner when she was detained. Surveillance video confirmed she was taken into custody by six ICE brokers who seem sporting masks and plain garments and driving unmarked vehicles.

A University of Alabama doctoral student initially from Iran was additionally taken into custody on Tuesday, based on the college. A search of an ICE database confirmed the coed, Alireza Doroudi, was in custody. It was unclear as of Thursday why he was being detained or the place he was being held.

Each Ozturk and Doroudi had been within the U.S. on F-1 visas, which permit worldwide college students to enter the nation to review full-time at American universities. 

Labor unions representing college professors on Wednesday filed a lawsuit claiming the detentions of noncitizen college students and school is a violation of the First Modification, as is the risk to take away Columbia University’s $400 million in federal funds if the college didn’t make modifications. 

The lawsuit cites President Trump’s March 4 submit on social media that these collaborating in “unlawful protests” could be arrested, saying that “beneath First Modification doctrine, the class ‘unlawful protests’ is rigorously circumscribed.”

“However, the submit didn’t say how federal officers would determine ‘unlawful protests’ or ‘agitators’ for functions of implementing the President’s acknowledged coverage, nor did it in any other case present steering to college, college students, or directors looking for to train (or permit others to train) First Modification rights whereas avoiding the danger of imprisonment, deportation, expulsion, arrest, or lack of “[a]ll” federal funding,” the lawsuit claims. 

The high-profile detentions of Ozturk and Doroudi adopted the detention earlier this month of Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia College grad pupil who had been energetic within the 2024 campus pro-Palestinian protests. Khalil is a Palestinian born in Syria with a green card, or authorized everlasting residency, not a pupil visa. Khalil’s lawyer, Amy Greer, stated on the time of his detention that an ICE agent stated they were acting on a State Department order to revoke his pupil visa, however once they had been knowledgeable that Khalil was within the U.S. as a everlasting resident with a inexperienced card, the agent stated they had been revoking that, too.  

After he was taken into custody, the federal government stated it was invoking a not often used part of U.S. immigration legislation to justify Khalil’s detention and eventual deportation that enables the secretary of state to make noncitizens topic to deportation if he determines their presence and actions threaten the international coverage pursuits of the U.S., citing alleged assist for Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror group. CBS News has not found evidence that Khalil has stated he helps Hamas. 

In a courtroom submitting earlier this week, the federal government additionally alleged that Khalil failed to disclose on his immigration forms his involvement with UNRWA, the United Nations company for Palestine refugees; the Syria workplace of the British embassy in Beirut; and a gaggle often called Columbia College Apartheid Divest.  

The federal government additionally stated within the submitting that claims by Khalil’s attorneys that his detention violated the First Modification had been a “purple herring.” 

Khalil is at the moment in custody in a federal detention facility in Louisiana. 

Rubio said after Khalil was taken into custody that the administration could be revoking the visas and inexperienced playing cards “of Hamas supporters in America to allow them to be deported.” 

When asked on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” if Rubio might present proof to assist a hyperlink to terrorism, or whether or not Khalil was merely espousing a controversial political standpoint, Rubio cited information footage, saying “these guys take over whole buildings, they vandalize schools.”

Rubio stated Khalil is “going to go away — and so are others.” 

“We will hold doing it,” Rubio stated about revoking visas. 

contributed to this report.