Immigrant Children and College Students are Being Targeted in Trump's America
The government is unilaterally canceling student visas and harassing young immigrants. Meanwhile, immigrant children are being violently bullied and attacked by their peers. It's all connected.
Some snapshots of life as an immigrant in the United States, Anno 2025:
Venezuelan migrants are deemed “invaders” and “alien enemies” and deported with no due process to a foreign prison camp.
A noncitizen campus activist is dragged out of his home in the night and faces deportation based on his beliefs.
A Salvadoran immigrant with a court order protecting him against deportation to El Salvador is deported to El Salvador.
A graduate student from Turkey is abducted by unidentified masked government agents from the street near her home and sent to a detention camp based on beliefs she expressed in a campus newspaper editorial.
You’ve probably read or heard about the specific incidents summarized above, which are among the most high-profile of countless recent examples along the same lines.
But did you know that the federal government is making a concerted effort to disrupt the lives of young immigrants? Did you know that the anti-immigrant ethos emanating from the highest levels of the U.S. government is trickling down to the schoolyard?
First they came for the immigrants,
And I did not speak out
Because I was not an immigrant
Canceling Student Visas With No Notice
At this writing, over 150 colleges and universities have reported that the State Department has unilaterally changed or revoked the visa status of hundreds of foreign students. As reported in The Hill, “International students are seeing their visas revoked for infractions as minor as traffic violations, while colleges are having to check immigration databases to find out whether their students are still allowed to be in the country.” Inside Higher Ed reports that Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department was revoking visas from students he claimed were “lunatics.”
What the government is doing is going into the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) — an online database that manages information about international students for the Department of Homeland Security — and simply revoking students’ visa authorization in the system. This immediately serves to put them in unlawful immigration status in the United States. In many if not most cases, neither the student nor the college or university is being notified in advance, if at all.
In a related development, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) has introduced a bill in Congress that would eliminate the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, which is a kind of work permit that allows foreign graduates of U.S. colleges and universities to remain in the United States and work in fields related to their degrees for up to three years.
It’s almost as if the government just wants to rid the United States of immigrants! Targeting students seems especially nefarious. But hey, why would we want the best, brightest, hardest working and most resourceful people from around the world to study and work in the United States and contribute to our culture and economy?
Doing Fake “Wellness Checks” to Harass Unaccompanied Immigrant Youth
Many young migrants who arrive in the United States alone can qualify for lawful status through a procedure known as Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS). SIJS provides a pathway to permanent residence (and eventually citizenship) for young noncitizens who have been abandoned, abused or neglected by a parent.
Unaccompanied minors who arrive in the United States are transferred by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). If an unaccompanied minor has relatives in the United States, ORR will generally release the minor to family members. Otherwise, the minor may be placed with a foster family or housed in some kind of youth facility.
In recent weeks, there have been numerous reports of government agents visiting SIJS-eligible youth living with relatives in the United States to perform what they are calling “wellness checks” or “welfare checks.” These are not officials from ORR, which has jurisdiction over these children, but from the Department of Homeland Security.
To my knowledge this has never been a standard practice in the past. A video of one such encounter that went viral — showing five armed plainclothes agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) arriving at the home of a SIJS beneficiary who is awaiting eligibility for permanent residence — indicates that the real purpose is to harass and intimidate.
Violence Against Immigrant Children Increases
Three Afghan girls were sitting at lunch at their Houston middle school last month when they were surrounded and attacked by approximately 20 of their classmates. They were beaten and attacked with pencils, and one of the victims ended up in the hospital with severe injuries. The school has refused to meet with the victims’ parents or to transfer the girls to a safer environment.
There are undoubtedly numerous other examples of immigrant children being bullied in school. In February of this year, an 11-year-old girl in Texas committed suicide after she was bullied by classmates about her family’s immigration status.
Where, one wonders, do children learn to treat their immigrant peers like this?
In the words of Rodney King:
Horrible