As Trump cracks down on pro-Palestine student protestors, Mary O’Leary questions what this could mean for the future of America’s academic institutions
On March 8, 2025, a Columbia University international student named Mahmoud Khalil was arrested at his apartment in New York City by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and set off a chain of arrests across the US.
His arrest was under accusations of pro-Hamas activity. While Khalil acted as a spokesperson for the Columbia University pro-Palestine movement, he has shown no public support for the militant group.
By correlating support for Palestine with support for Hamas, Trump’s administration is both attempting to discredit the pro-Palestine movement and make excuses for their unjust arrests.
The question now is why any international student would take the risk of coming to the US if it meant they were under threat of arrest and deportation
Other arrests include students like Rumeysa Ozturk, Chung Yunseo, Alireza Doroudi, Badar Khan Suri, and many more taken by ICE. Most of the students arrested were in the US on student visas, with some like Ozturk and Chung even holding green cards. Chung herself has lived in the US since she was seven years old. Like Khalil, they were arrested on claims of being pro-Hamas, and as such, this proves the American administration’s lack of differentiation between pro-Palestine movements and pro-Hamas activity.
Of those arrested, many were taken out of New York to states like Louisiana where the courts act favorably towards conviction and deportation. Once deported there is no guarantee that some will return to their country of origin, with many non-student based deportees sent to countries like El Salvador in Central America.
Mary Yanik, director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Tulane Law School in New Orleans, says, “They’re being placed in facilities that have pretty horrendous conditions, a lot of difficulties with access to counsel and in what is really a more hostile legal jurisdiction to fight their case for the right to remain in the United States.”
The question now is why any international student would take the risk of coming to the US if it meant they were under threat of arrest and deportation. At the moment it is mostly pro-Palestine students under threat, but what is to stop the Trump administration from arresting students for any activity deemed anti-American?
After all, Ozturk herself was arrested for simply co-writing an article calling for Columbia’s divestment from Israel. If international students are under threat of arrest by the US government for exercising free speech, why should international students trust American universities to protect their rights at all?
Furthermore, the Trump administration has made its stance on education quite clear with his dismantling of the Department of Education (ED) and removal of progressive lessons in schools. Trump’s administration has stated multiple times that this would include getting rid of history lessons related to racism and slavery as well as LGBTQ+ history.
The Trump administration has also threatened to withhold funding from universities and colleges with DEI initiatives and federal funding for low-income students. In practice, this would make higher education in the US even more exclusive than it already is, with rich, mostly white, upper-class students being given top priority.
The American Civil Liberties Union stated, “Without the ED, the federal government’s capacity to collect data is eviscerated, which is an essential resource for identifying and addressing disparities in education. Without this oversight, school districts won’t be held accountable for unjustified racial and disability disparities in discipline, academic performance, and access to resources”.
These restrictions would also affect the reputations of American universities and the American education system as a whole. For international students looking to study in America, these restrictions would put not just the accuracy of their education at risk but also its validity. For Americans who earn American degrees, the question of validity would directly affect them as well.
Americans who wish to work abroad or for foreign companies could find their degrees directly questioned. Foreign and international companies will not be able to trust that those with an American degree are properly educated due to monitoring in their academic institutions. Most significantly would be those receiving degrees in humanities courses like history, which are directly being policed by the Trump administration.
In doing this, Trump and the American government are isolating both their young population and their academic institutions. People like Mahmoud Khalil are being turned into examples for what happens when a student, citizen or not, ‘steps out of line’. This sort of regulation not only restricts freedom of speech but also disallows any form of criticism towards the governing class. In targeting students and the academic institutions, Trump is inadvertently crumbling the global perception of American academics and its reputation.