International students no longer feel comfortable in the US.

Many international students in Trump’s America live in dread, abductions, and deportations.

Students from other nations in the US live precariously.

I recall my first trip from Kolkata to upstate New York as an international student to study at a modest liberal arts institution. The US-led “war on terror” was in full swing in 2003. My arrival in New York was only months after the US attacked Iraq.

It was soon painfully obvious to me that someone who “looked like me” did not belong in the “Land of the Free.” This was the case whether it was the on-campus jingoism that was inspired by America’s battle against the “Axis of Evil” that left little room for criticism of US foreign policy in school, the “random” airport security checks at airports, or the nearly constant racism and Islamophobia that was broadcast on the American airwaves.

Since then, overseas students in America have seen little improvement. They were still seen as untrustworthy foreigners by many Americans, and their lives were precarious.

However, Trump 2.0 has increased precarity to unprecedented heights. Today, the US seems unwelcoming and hazardous for overseas students.

Trump has made overseas students’ life worse. This was expected as he had vowed to do so on the campaign trail almost a year ago. He was notorious for his dislike of Palestine solidarity campaigners on campus and claimed that Marxists and extreme leftists ruled colleges and certification authorities. He threatened to cancel the student permits of “radical, anti-American and anti-Semitic foreigners” protesting pro-Palestinian rallies on US college campuses in October 2023 if re-elected.

After returning to the White House, he targeted pro-Palestine overseas students and professors.

One of his main objectives was Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil. Green card holder Khalil negotiated between Columbia’s pro-Palestine demonstrators and university authorities. The Trump administration wants to deport him for pro-Hamas, anti-American actions. In early March, ICE authorities took Khalil from his New York home in front of his pregnant American wife. He has been jailed in Louisiana for over a month.

Masked, plain-clothed Boston police grabbed Turkish PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk. She was also sent to Louisiana jail. Her crime? Co-writing a Tufts Daily op-ed urging her institution to divest from Israel.

Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown University postdoctoral researcher from India, is in ICE prison in Texas and faces deportation. Suri didn’t attend Palestine solidarity rallies. His guilt seems to be being the son-in-law of former Gaza Hamas advisor Ahmed Yousef. Yousef quit Hamas’ political branch over a decade ago and dubbed the group’s October 7, 2023 assault on Israel “a terrible error”.