4/9 Update: Michelle Smith McDonald, San José State senior director of media relations, confirmed the number of student visa revocations is 13.
San José State confirmed the revocation of 11 SJSU student visas amid a flood of cancellations to California universities from President Donald J. Trump’s administration.
Within the last week, a minimum of 121 international student visas were terminated across several California State University and University of California (UC) campuses, according to a Tuesday San Francisco Chronicle article.
Michelle Smith McDonald, SJSU’s senior director of media relations, confirmed the updated number of student visas in an email to the Spartan Daily on Tuesday afternoon.
“There are 11 students who have had their visas terminated as of this afternoon,” Smith McDonald wrote.
Two students from Orange County and from another region east of Los Angeles County filed a lawsuit against the federal government for revoking their student visas, according to a Tuesday article from EdSource.
Both students are suing the Department of Homeland Security and two government officials for allegedly attempting to coerce students into “self-deporting” by revoking their visas, according to the lawsuit from Student Doe #2.
An international student from SJSU who has been living in the United States for 10 years said she came to the United States when she was in elementary school.
The student requested to be anonymous because of concerns that her immigration status may be compromised for speaking out.
“It's sad to see that now just having something as simple as freedom of speech is something that I have to be scared of doing because I might get my visa revoked and (I) might have to get sent back to my country,” the student said.
Smith McDonald said SJSU currently has 4,000 international students enrolled at the university.
The international student said she realized she had a voice when she started joining student organizations on campus.
She also said she is still scared sometimes to speak up because she has to consider what consequences she may face, but she believes that no one can take away a person’s right to free speech.
“I feel like no matter what, I will kind of fight for what I do believe in and because I don't want to hold myself back,” the student said. “I feel like a lot of people (are) in the same boat as me
and I feel like (if) we work together, we can make change.”
SJSU’s international student population comes from over 100 different countries, according to a webpage from Global Spartans at SJSU.
Sang Hea Kil, a co-founder and member of the Caucus for Rank-and-file Education Workers within the California Faculty Association, has felt the effects of the current presidential administration.
“This is the scariest time in my life that I’ve ever experienced, and I can only imagine how much worse it is for someone who's undocumented or someone who’s not a citizen,” Hea Kil said.
She relayed that students affected by these visa revocations should look into a civil liberties lawyer and establish a buddy system.
A civil liberties lawyer helps to provide legal protections to an individual’s civil rights and freedoms that have been violated, according to a Commonwealth Law Group webpage.
An established buddy system pairs immigrants or refugees with local volunteers and advocates, according to a webpage from the Red Cross European Office.
Sofia Calderon, a second-year political science student, said seeing students lose their visas is instilling a sense of fear for many students who hold various levels of immigration status.
Calderon, who is also the president of M.E.Ch.A. de SJSU and an advocate for students with different levels of immigration status, said some students are afraid to come to campus.
M.E.Ch.A. de SJSU stands for Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlan and is a student organization that supports students in learning more about the Latino community and its history, according to its bio on the Sammy App.
“I can say that this revoking of the student visas has definitely shed a new layer of fear and internal turmoil in the mixed status community,” Calderon said. “This community already had to tread lightly and it feels like they have to try even lighter, because any mistake that they make will now be used against them.”
SJSU posted a travel guide for international students recommending them to return to the U.S. before Trump’s presidential inauguration on Jan. 20 because the new administration could enact travel bans and other policies, according to its webpage.
In March, the Trump administration drafted a list of 43 countries to include as part of a new ban on travel to the U.S., according to a March 14 New York Times article.
“I feel like first they came for the undocumented, then they came for the documented, and soon they’re gonna come for citizens,” Hea Kil said.
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said during a Tuesday White House briefing that President Trump has both privately and publicly discussed potentially deporting American citizens.
“These would be heinous violent criminals who have broken our laws repeatedly; these are violent repeat offenders in American streets,” Leavitt said.
