As Trump Floats New Travel Restrictions, International Students Look for Guidance from Harvard

One day after President Donald Trump issued an executive order threatening to deport students who broke the law during pro-Palestine protests, leaders of the Woodbridge International Society asked the Harvard International Office for clarity on how the order might impact students at Harvard.

The co-presidents, not wanting to spread panic, asked for a meeting between the WIS and the HIO about the immigration orders from Washington, but were told by College HIO advisors in early February that it was too soon to meet with the organization as a whole, according to Woodbridge Co-President Saskia Hermann ’28.

“They told us that it’s a little bit too early to have a meeting because everything is still unclear,” Hermann said. “I think that’s still a big thing — that the executive orders and everything that’s happening — it’s not quite clear how that will affect people directly and how it’s going to be implemented.”

While Trump’s Jan. 29 executive order limited the deportation threat to students who had broken laws — a logic the White House extended last week to a pro-Palestine organizer at Columbia University accused of leading “activities aligned to Hamas” — the Trump administration is currently finalizing a new travel ban from Muslim-majority countries, according to reporting by the New York Times and Reuters.

Outside of Woodbridge, the College’s main affinity group for international students, several international students said they wished HIO and College officials would provide more guidance about immigration policy changes under the Trump administration.

“I think it could be very helpful if they could send out more detailed communications about what these new policies mean for the international community here,” said Zaria A. Ferguson ’26, a student from Jamaica and leader of the First-Year International Program.

Since Trump’s election in November, top Harvard officials have not issued public statements about immigration policies, though Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 told The Crimson in a December interview that Harvard would “continue to provide support for our students, as we have always done with regard to immigration.”

And beyond vague guidance by the HIO to international students, advising them over winter break to be “back before Martin Luther King day” and recommending they “budget time ahead of classes resuming on March 24” in a Feb. 19 email about spring break, the office has not provided guidance about how a new travel ban could affect students.

A University spokesperson wrote in a statement that “we continue to monitor any changes to policies and practices to understand how they might impact members of our community.”

“Harvard is committed to keeping our international students and scholars informed on any changes, and to providing appropriate support, as needed,” they added.

Trump’s new travel ban is expected to affect immigrants from the seven countries targeted by his 2017 executive order — Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen — and may also extend to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the New York Times reported. The ban will likely be announced by March 21, when the Secretary of State and Secretary of Homeland Security are due to submit a report to the White House on countries to include.

According to data from the Harvard International Office website, five students currently enrolled at the College are from countries that were on the 2017 travel ban list. That number rises to 15 if Afghanistan and Pakistan are included.

Abdullah S. Sial ’27, who is from Pakistan, said he thinks that even if a sweeping travel ban were to be enacted, it is “fairly unlikely” to have severe impacts on international students at Harvard who have an F-1 student visa — which allows foreigners to study in the U.S. at an accredited institution.

Trump’s 2017 travel ban did not prevent international students with F-1 visas from remaining in the U.S. to study at colleges and universities.

Sial cautioned, however, that his predictions about future policies could “fully change in the next couple of hours.”

Taybah Crorie ’25, a student from England, said international students at Harvard are worried about how new policies could impact their ability to remain at Harvard.

“There is a concern amongst international students — and there were many international students who did participate in pro Palestinian activities on campus — that they could be targeted by the Trump administration and made an example of through deportation, and that Harvard will not have the power to stop that,” Crorie said.

After Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials arrested Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia graduate and green card holder, a White House official said Khalil’s participation in “pro-Hamas rallies” threatened national security, but the administration has not filed formal charges against him. His arrest has raised questions among legal scholars of how broadly the Trump administration will define national security threats moving forward.

Although New York federal Judge Jesse Furman blocked the deportation effort, Khalil remains in a Louisiana ICE detention facility.

Without much direction or assurance from Harvard, many said they do not know what support might be available.

“There’s been very little comment,” Crorie said. “It’s felt like they just don’t know and so they can’t support us.”

Lacking guidance from Harvard, Woodbridge leaders opted to solicit anonymous feedback from students with concerns in a survey publicized in their March 4 weekly newsletter.

“This form is for international students to anonymously submit any questions or raise any concerns regarding their status as immigrants in the U.S., the implications of Trump’s executive order, or any other policies of the administration that impact international students,” they wrote in the newsletter.

Crorie said the risk of new executive orders, which immediately go into effect, has made the semester particularly stressful.

“As an international student, you can imagine that’s very scary to know that at any point in time, your future outlook and what you had imagined for yourself can go away overnight,” she said.

—Staff writer Samuel A. Church can be reached at samuel.church@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @samuelachurch.

—Staff writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at cam.srivastava@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @camsrivastava.