The Trump administration is exploring plans to potentially bar certain U.S. colleges from enrolling any foreign students if officials determine these institutions harbor too many students they classify as “pro-Hamas,” according to senior Justice and State Department officials.
The initiative expands Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s “Catch and Revoke” program, which has already resulted in more than 300 foreign students having their visas revoked in just three weeks. The program now specifically targets students who participated in protests against the war in Gaza.
“Everyone is fair game,” said a senior State Department official, who referred to the demonstrators being targeted as “Hamasniks” — individuals the government claims have expressed support for the terror group.
At the core of the administration’s strategy is the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which certifies educational institutions to accept international students. Historically, schools have been decertified if the government determined they had excessive numbers of visa holders using education as a pretext to live and work in the United States.
The administration is now threatening to apply this decertification framework to colleges where students participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations that followed the October 7 attacks last year.
“Every institution that has foreign students… will go through some sort of review,” the State Department official said. “You can have so many bad apples in one place that it leads to decertification of the school… I don’t think we’re at that point yet. But it is not an empty threat.”
Columbia University and UCLA are among the institutions mentioned most frequently by administration officials. Both campuses experienced significant pro-Palestinian protests last year.
A UCLA spokesperson emphasized the university’s commitment to “eradicating hate” and pointed to its new Initiative to Combat Antisemitism.
Critics argue the administration’s approach infringes on free speech and due process rights while unfairly equating support for Palestinian rights with backing Hamas.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a nonpartisan free-speech advocacy group, expressed concern about the concept of decertifying entire universities based on who is deemed “pro-Hamas.”
“Deemed ‘pro-Hamas’ by whom? This kind of explicitly viewpoint-driven decision-making is ripe for abuse and risks arbitrary enforcement,” FIRE legal director Will Creeley said in a statement.
The initiative represents another component of the administration’s hardline immigration enforcement policies, which have already sparked multiple lawsuits potentially headed to the Supreme Court. Administration officials reportedly welcome these legal challenges as opportunities for the high court to expand executive branch deportation powers with minimal judicial review.
On Tuesday, March 25, a judge temporarily blocked federal agents from detaining Yunseo Chung, a Columbia student who participated in pro-Palestinian protests. Her lawsuit contends that immigration enforcement cannot “be used as a tool to punish noncitizen speakers who express political views disfavored by the current administration.”
Earlier this month, Mahmoud Khalil, an organizer of pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia, filed the first major challenge to Rubio’s authority to revoke a green card.
The proposed policy would affect portions of the approximately 1.5 million student visa holders currently studying at American universities.
