Gu was looking forward to his first semester as a master’s degree student in philosophy at the University of Houston in August. The 22-year-old, who asked the Associated Press to use only his family name because of the political sensitivity of his situation, had previously studied at Cornell University, received a full scholarship, and been awarded a visa after undergoing the usual screening and U.S. State Department interview in China, according to AP.

But when he arrived at the George W. Bush International Airport after a 29-hour flight, he found himself targeted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials. He was shunted into a room, where for the next 12 hours he was questioned three times by increasingly hostile officers. Under new Trump administration policies, all international students must now routinely submit to a review of all social media accounts: His phone and computer were confiscated and searched, and he was grilled about school papers, his social media posts, and about his parents’ politics. Gu initially agreed to speak to the Texas Observer but then did not respond to further emails. 

Gu has written vividly on Reddit about how his dream of an academic future in Houston ended in an airless limbo room where the lights never dimmed and the temperatures hovered at around 60 degrees. After being told his visa was being cancelled, he waited incommunicado for hours before being shuttled onto a flight home—banned for five years from re-entering the United States. 

The 22-year-old is among many students targeted under an initiative announced by the U.S. State Department in late May “to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including any with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.” The purges came after calls from conservative Congressmen like Brandon Gill, a Flower Mound Republican, for banning all Chinese students.

China, India, and Mexico were the top countries of origin for 89,000 international students enrolled in Texas universities in 2023-24, according to a State Department report. Their expenditures pumped an estimated $2.4 million into the Texas economy. That academic year, nationwide international student enrollment reached an all-time high. But those doors have slammed shut on some students from China and other countries via a series of high-profile presidential public orders and more mysterious private directives issued under the Trump administration.

Early on, Trump directly called for a crackdown on students who’d participated in protests against Israel’s war on Gaza. But by April, the purge expanded. At least 1,800 international students already living in the United States with valid visas were abruptly dropped from a Student and Exchange Visitors database (known as SEVIS), according to data compiled by Inside Higher Ed. The root cause of this purge, disclosed only in responses to student lawsuits and in cryptic official statements, appears to have been a massive mash-up of names in SEVIS with other government databases in an effort to track any international student with any administrative paperwork irregularity or any court record, including a misdemeanor arrest or traffic ticket.

By May, those actions, coupled with a corresponding decline in granting interviews to students seeking visas in key countries like China and India, drove the number of monthly student visas down by 20 percent compared to the year before, State Department data shows. In June, travel bans blocked any students from some countries in the Middle East or Africa, including Iran. Meanwhile, State Department officials implemented enhanced screening protocols everywhere, and students in countries like India and Nigeria found it increasingly difficult to obtain interviews they needed. 

SEVIS’s October 2025 statistics for all U.S. foreign students—including those studying in language programs, flight schools, K-12, undergraduate, and graduate programs—show the number of Chinese students of all ages approved to study in Texas as of October was 7,913—3 percent fewer than in October 2024; those from India dropped 4 percent, and enrollment from neighboring Mexico flatlined.

Nationwide, universities that historically admitted higher percentages of Chinese and Indian students already face potentially large drops in new student enrollment and in tuition payments. Inside Higher Ed has reported that nine U.S. colleges and universities it surveyed reported a median enrollment decline among foreign students of 20 percent compared to 2024.

NAFSA: Association of International Educators has projected that the full picture could be worse: a “30-40 percent decline in new international student enrollment in the United States this fall.” Texas universities recently released preliminary enrollment numbers that show a few schools with historically large numbers of foreign students experienced overall enrollment declines. But international enrollment data was not provided; several Texas universities did not respond to requests for comment.

“The immediate economic losses projected here are just the tip of the iceberg,” Fanta Aw, executive director and CEO of NAFSA said in an emailed statement to the Observer. “International students drive innovation, advance America’s global competitiveness, and create research and academic opportunities in our local colleges that will benefit our country for generations.”

The timing of the Spring 2025 SEVIS purges, carried out weeks before college final exams, prompted panic for undergraduate and graduate students who received news from universities that their status had abruptly ended and they could be targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Many were nearing the end of their semesters; some had almost finished degrees. In the ensuing chaos, many feared detention or deportation—and losing university-related jobs and scholarships, thousands of dollars in tuition, plus the time they’d invested. According to Inside Higher Ed and the Texas Newsroom, at least 350 international students in Texas were targeted—about half enrolled in the vast University of Texas system.

Marlene Dougherty, an immigration attorney based in South Texas, told the Observer she normally never represents international students: Their routine paperwork is typically handled by university officials who work in international student services. But she sued the government in April on behalf of five students who had been attending the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley when they were abruptly dropped from SEVIS. Those students were originally from Mexico and Iran, she said.

Other international students dropped from SEVIS joined large class-action cases filed in federal courts in April—and some within weeks won relief by arguing that everyone in the United States has a right to due process and that their rights had been violated. But a Texas federal court delayed the UTRGV students’ case several times. As they waited, the students’ names, along with the names of students dropped at other U.S. institutions, mysteriously reappeared in the SEVIS database.

In an interview, Dougherty said that her clients were informed that they can continue their studies, although their student visas have been revoked. “Their statuses were reinstated, but their visas were not. So they can’t travel out of the country—if they do they’re likely not going to be granted a new visa,” she said. Still, she’s optimistic that all of her clients will be able to finish their degrees.

Her Iranian client, like other Iranian immigrants nationwide, faces even bigger barriers. Iran is one of 12 countries that was targeted in June for a full ban on all immigrant and non-immigrant visas. (Another seven countries face a partial pan, including Cuba and Venezuela). 

According to State Department statistics, only about 12,400 Iranian students studied in the United States as of 2023-24, and Texas was one of their top destinations. But as of October 2025, 1,206 had been approved to study in Texas in all grade levels, fewer than last year, according to SEVIS data. Under the June ban, virtually no Iranians can get visas, including students who’d been approved after years of waiting. (Though exceptions can be made for relatives of U.S. citizens or dual nationals of another country.)

Immigration attorney Curtis Morrison, who has helped Iranian students navigate the process, said they always faced extensive vetting, with some waiting as long as six years. Now, they’re all barred. He said he’s advising those already here on student visas to post absolutely nothing on social media and act “basically as if they never left Iran,” he told the Observer.

UTRGV does not have a particularly high percentage of international students—only about 254 were classified that way, less than 1 percent of the student body in 2022. By comparison, the University of Texas at El Paso, UTEP, had more than 1,100 international students or about 5 percent, according to the UT system’s 2022 analysis. Other UT elite graduate research programs had much higher percentages of foreign students. 

Fall enrollment of international students is expected to suffer based on a combination of factors, per NAFSA. First, fewer student visas are being awarded, and students from nations that traditionally have sent the most students here, like India, have struggled to get the State Department interviews. Additionally, students already here—holders of I, J, and K visas for study, foreign exchange, or research—are still being targeted by ICE or by CBP as a result of the SEVIS purges or by CBP upon arrival in U.S. airports.

Chinese student enrollment nationwide has already dropped 5 percent in all programs compared to last year, per the SEVIS October 2025 statistics. But the declines in new student enrollment will likely be much higher. In June, to protest the administration’s policy, 700 U.S. scholars and experts on China signed a petition opposing the restrictions. Several Texans signed, including Stephen Field, co-director of the East Asian Studies Interdisciplinary Program at Trinity University in San Antonio. 

“The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 remains one of the most serious blemishes on America’s record of civil rights. The new visa policy toward Chinese students represents a troubling twenty-first-century parallel,” he told the Observer via email.

Another signatory was Patricia Maclachlan, a professor of government and Asian studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where for the last decade more than 1,200 Chinese students have enrolled each year. In an email, Maclachlan told the Observer that she recognizes “that relations between the U.S. and China are tense and that the U.S., for national security reasons, may have to curb Chinese access to certain sensitive technologies and academic programs. But the costs of imposing broad restrictions on Chinese students are great; they weaken or destroy opportunities for young Chinese and Americans to learn about one another and to establish the kinds of long-term interpersonal relationships that form the bedrock of bilateral trust building and enduring economic and diplomatic ties.”

In three decades, Maclahlan said she’d “worked with countless Chinese students at both the graduate level and in my undergraduate courses on the political economies and international relations of East Asia. My experiences with these students have been very positive—they have given me no reason to support their exclusion from our campuses.”

Tae Heung “Will” Kim, a graduate student at Texas A&M University, is a legal permanent resident; nevertheless, he too was targeted for interrogation and detention after his plane landed at the international airport in San Francisco in July. He had recently returned to South Korea to attend a wedding but considered Texas home: His parents, both U.S. citizens, emigrated from South Korea when he was 4 years old. But by the time his parents became naturalized citizens, he was too old to automatically win that designation.

At first, Kim’s relatives had no idea why he was being held at the airport, where initially he was unable to communicate with them or with an attorney. Kim, 40, is a longtime resident of Bryan-College station who is employed as a PhD researcher at A&M, where he was helping to develop a vaccine for Lyme’s disease. 

After he’d been detained more than a week at the San Francisco airport, his family hired an immigration lawyer who held a press conference to protest. Apparently, he was targeted, his lawyer Karl Krooth explained, after ICE found that he had, 14 years before, been arrested for possession of marijuana—a misdemeanor.
Months later, his ordeal continues. By September, Kim had been transferred first to an immigration detention center in Arizona and then to one in Texas. In early November, his name no longer appeared in the ICE detention database. He’d apparently been released while his case is reviewed, but his lawyer declined to comment on his current status. Krooth only told the Observer that he hopes to be able to provide an update soon.

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