Why are international students being detained in the US?
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For more than a year, there have been huge protests on American university campuses.

But now, some of the students who were at the pro-Palestinian protests have been detained and risk deportation. Here's Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State. The people that we're getting rid of in our country are vandalising, they're not protesters, they're taking over college campuses, they're harassing fellow students. The arrests are part of President Donald Trump's effort to clamp down on these protests on uni campuses, saying they go against foreign policy and national security interests.

But some people are concerned about the legitimacy of the detentions and what this means for freedom of speech. Here's a university faculty member. Well, my concern is that our students don't feel safe expressing themselves freely on campus. In this episode, we're going to explain why some international students who were involved in campus demonstrations over Gaza have been detained in America and ask, is it legal? I'm Hannah Gelbart, and you're listening to What in the World from the BBC World Service. ♪

Before we get into this, for context, the US government says it's detained these students because it claims the protesters support Hamas, which it calls a terrorist organisation. Gaza has been run by Hamas since 2007. That was the group that was responsible for the October 7th attack on Israel in 2023.

Israel responded to that attack by invading Gaza. More than 50,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and around the world people have been protesting against Israel.

To find out more about the U.S. protests and arrests, I'm speaking to Natalia Jimenez, a BBC reporter in New York. Hi, Natalia. Hi, how are you? Yeah, great to have you back on the podcast. So tell me a little bit about the people who've been detained. What do we know about them? So the biggest case that's made headlines is Mahmoud Khalil. He's a Palestinian grad student at Columbia University here in New York.

He's actually a legal U.S. resident, but he was detained in March by ICE agents and they moved him to a detention center in Louisiana. He has a green card. He has full residency here in the U.S., but he's being kept there because of his involvement in the encampments at Columbia University, those protests that have been happening since Israel's war in Gaza. So the government is

basically arguing that his activism is a national security threat. But they actually haven't charged him with any crime just yet.

His lawyers are saying that he's being targeted for speaking out. And another case is Rumesa Ozturk, of course. She's a PhD student from Turkey at Tufts University. That's in Boston. She was detained by ICE and also sent to Louisiana in the same detention center. And in this case, they're pretty much saying the same thing. She supposedly supported Hamas in an op-ed that she wrote calling for the boycott of

of Israel by her university and she's been accused of supporting Hamas but there's no criminal activity that she's been involved with there's been no crime and there's also been no evidence so it's created a real sense of fear among specifically international students because it shows that even involvement in peaceful protests no crimes being brought against them is

it still means that you could be at risk of being possibly deported. ICE, of course, stands for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And there have been a number of protests about their arrests, haven't there?

Yes, there have been. There's been protests across the country. The main message that they're trying to send is that the Trump administration, in their eyes, is trying to suppress their movement. It's been one of the biggest student protest movements in years. And a lot of the people who've been involved in it, even without being arrested, are being detained and possibly deported.

Talking of U.S. President Donald Trump, what have he and his administration said about wanting to crack down on pro-Palestinian demonstrations? Right. So the messaging from Trump and his team has been that campus protests aren't just political activism. They're framing them as dangerous, as anti-American and hate marches, as Trump has coined it himself.

He says that foreign students who join these protests, or like Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said, cause a ruckus, should be deported immediately. We let them in our country to study. We gave them a visa because they said, I want to go to your university, I want to get a degree. They didn't say, I want to go to university and I want to vandalize your library and I want to chase Jewish students down the street and I want to wear a mask over my face like if it's Halloween and terrorize people. We didn't give them a visa to do any of that.

Every country in the world has a right to decide who comes in as a visitor and who doesn't. He's basically made these protests a key part of his whole law and order politics.

And the main message that they're sending is that, yes, you can be in the U.S. on an F-1 visa, on a green card, but it's still a privilege and they have the right to revoke that at any point if they feel like you are a threat to national security. So just to give you some context, policy-wise, Trump signed an executive order in January to fight anti-Semitism on college campuses. But

But critics say, and even some legal experts, that it's being used much more broadly. And things like cutting off federal funding for colleges has also been one of his main pressure points. So it's an entire crackdown that's being framed around this national security threat. And how big has the pro-Palestinian protest movement been in universities across the U.S.? And have the protests been peaceful?

Yeah. So these protests have been going on pretty much since Israel's war in Gaza. So they have been happening across the country. They have happened at the biggest institutions in the United States. I mean, we're talking about Colombia. We're talking about NYU. We're talking about UCLA, thousands of students there.

Sit-in rallies, divestment campaigns, op-eds. This has been across the country and they have been mostly peaceful. There have been arrests that have been made, mostly because of clashes between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups.

But they have been mostly peaceful across the country. And a lot of the students that are being detained at the moment have not been charged with a crime and have not been accused of any violence in their protesting.

So what is it that lawyers are saying about the detentions of, you know, particularly these high profile cases, Rumeza, Ozturk, Mahmoud Khalil? What are lawyers saying about their detentions and the fact that they are being arrested for protesting? Is that allowed? Right. So the civil liberty groups, these lawyers, these law professors, all these advocacy organizations, they're saying that the Trump administration's actions are a clear violation of First Amendment rights.

They are arguing that peaceful protests and political speech, even speech that is critical of the U.S. and its allies, is protected under the Constitution. And that's regardless of immigration status. That's opposing what Secretary Marco Rubio said, where he said having a visa in this country, it is actually a privilege.

So no one's saying that the government can't deport people who commit crimes, but these lawyers say that they're being punished for their political actions. So there's concern about due process. A lot of these students are being detained and their visas are being canceled and they're being held in remote ICE detentions like Louisiana, but with no due process. There's been no evidence so far of the crimes that they've supposedly committed. The First Amendment is, of course, the legal right

to free speech in the US. And what's the mood among university students? Are they afraid of going out and protesting given what's happened?

From what we've heard, they are terrified. They think that this sets a precedent for free speech on college campuses. And for context, universities in the U.S., just like around the world, have been a beacon for protest movements. They feel as though they are not being protected by their universities. Natalia, I'm going to play you a clip from Carly, who's a student at Columbia University. Total utter weaponization of free speech.

That is effective. I mean, we see it in our classrooms. We literally have international students who refuse to raise their hand in class. We have international students who no longer come to class. So many of them feel like they are on their own. They are not sure what this means for the future of free speech on college campuses. And to be honest, not a lot of them, especially on international student visas, feel safe at the moment. Natalia, thank you so much for explaining that. Thank you so much. Thank you.

One reason the US government has taken these actions is because it says the pro-Palestinian protests at universities are anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish. Some Jewish students say they have felt unsafe and there have been reports of increased abuse against both Muslim and Jewish students since the war in Gaza began.

Pro-Palestinian organisers at universities have regularly denied they're anti-Semitic. They say they're demonstrating against Israel's military operation in Gaza and want to end the war.

Now let's hear from Jake Horton, a journalist for BBC Verify, who joins me in the studio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. Hello, good to be here. Thank you for joining us. So we've heard quite a bit of legal jargon. Can you break down some of these key terms for us? Firstly, the First Amendment. So the First Amendment is probably the more straightforward one. So it's the right to free speech in America. And that covers everyone in America if they're on a visa or if they're a citizen. The next one we've been hearing about is the Immigration and Nationality Act.

So that is the act that the Trump administration is trying to use to deport people who participated in student protests last year. And that is around people who have adversarial effects on US foreign policy. It's a little bit more complicated, but it's an act that's been on the books for over 70 years. And it's something that hasn't been tested that much in the courts. Obviously, there was pro-Palestinian protests.

across US universities. The Trump administration has framed these as pro-Hamas protests and said people that they are targeting with deportation were participating in activities that were aligned with Hamas. Now, there's been very little proof provided of this so far, and that is something that will play out in the legal process.

But the Trump administration is saying they can use this act because those people who participated were aligned with Hamas, who the US recognises as a terrorist organisation. And of course, that would have adverse foreign policy effects for the United States. Next, we've got Executive Order 13899, which is the executive order on combating antisemitism. Yeah, so this whole issue around clamping down on student protests, something that Trump talked about

on the campaign trail. And in his first two weeks in office, he moved to pass this executive order, which you said is titled the Executive Order to Combat Antisemitism. And one of the key provisions in the executive order is clamping down on student protesters, which the Trump administration sees as having activities which align with Hamas. Now, an executive order is a

a directive for government agencies and the rest of the federal government to act in a certain way, but it still has to fall in the parameters of existing law. So that's why they have to lean on other laws like the law we talked about earlier to kind of see this executive order through. The Trump administration is...

going back into the archives of American law dating back 300, 400 years and finding these quite obscure laws to see their policies through that have rarely been tested. So they're really stretching the bounds of the law and they're kind of going to see if they can walk their way up the courts and if these things will actually be doable. I want to drill a little bit deeper into what you said earlier about foreign policy because the government has the right to deport someone if they're a threat to foreign policy.

How exactly is that defined? Yeah, so the law, like I said, dates back over 70 years. And I can quote directly from the law. There's a clause in it which says a foreign national can have his or her visa revoked and they can be deported. The Secretary of State in the US, which at the moment is Marco Rubio, has a reasonable ground to believe they would have potential serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the US. Now, that is quite a broad term.

thing. And that's something that hasn't been tested very much, as I touched on a little bit earlier. So and I spoke to several immigration law experts who said that will have to be played out in the courts. And that could be a simple letter from the Secretary of State saying an individual has a foreign policy, an adverse foreign policy consequence on the US, or they might have to prove something more tangible. For instance, they might have to prove they had direct

contact with a terrorist organisation or funding from a terrorist organisation, it just hasn't been tested much. So we'll have to see in the fullness of time what that actually means. That's quite a high level of evidence, contact with a terrorist organisation, funding from a terrorist organisation. That's evidence above and beyond, for example, taking part in a protest or writing an op-ed for a newspaper. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And most legal experts would say the latter two things that you mentioned would fall in with the free speech, which is a provision which is protected under the US Constitution. But if they can provide something more tangible, like I said, like communications with a terrorist organization or funding from a terrorist organization, that would be more a higher burden of proof. And at the moment, that's not something that's been forthcoming when the Trump administration has provided information.

These legal arguments, they haven't really provided the tangible proof yet. So is it the Immigration and Nationality Act that is being used to charge these students or are there other factors coming into play? Yes, it is that act and that act alone. Initially, there was a bit of confusion and the White House, the press secretary in the White House highlighted that act and so is Marco Rubio and so is President Trump.

What happens next? Do you think they actually will deport them? It's a long legal process. Like I said, it hasn't been tested. These people who have been arrested are currently in immigration detention.

But just because you detain someone and revoke their visa doesn't mean they automatically get deported. Everybody in the US has a right to due process and a right to a fair legal trial. And that takes a long time. Mahmoud Khalil's case is quite different to that of a lot of the other students that we've been hearing about. What is it about his case that's so different?

So the biggest difference is he was on a green card. So he had married a US citizen and that meant he has a green card, which basically makes him a permanent resident of the US.

Most of the other people that you've heard about have been on student visas. So they're just on a temporary visa in the US, which is a lot easier to revoke, a lot easier for the Trump administration to basically overturn those visas. So Mahmoud Khalil would be more protected under US constitution because he is a permanent resident. And that's the biggest difference. Jake, thanks so much for coming in. Thank you.

That is it for today's episode. Thank you for joining us. If you want to hear more about how the world is changing under Donald Trump's presidency, we've explained things like how USAID works and whether China could replace the US as a global aid giver.

You can find all of our episodes on podcast platforms and on the BBC World Service YouTube channel. And if you've got thoughts or ideas for stories that you think we should be covering, please do get in touch with us. We're on WhatsApp or Instagram at BBC What In The World. I'm Hannah Gelbart and you've been listening to What In The World from the BBC World Service. We'll be back with another episode soon. See you then.