Five international students at Minnesota State University, Mankato, had their legal student status revoked by the Department of Homeland Security without notification, the university’s president said Wednesday. On Thursday afternoon, the University of Minnesota said two of their international students systemwide had their visas revoked.
The revocation for these seven students comes after a student from each university was arrested last week by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Those arrested students also had their statuses terminated.
Metro State University in St. Paul also confirmed the termination of one student’s legal status. St. Cloud State University said some of their international students’ legal statuses had been terminated as well. The university declined to give a specific number, but said these terminations affected “fewer than 10 international students.”
MSU Mankato staff discovered the revocations after a status check in the Student Exchange Visitor Information System, president Edward Inch told the campus community in an email sent late Wednesday night. The SEVIS system is an online platform maintained by DHS to track information on international students, who must maintain legal student status.
“These are troubling times, and this situation is unlike any we have navigated before,” Inch wrote.
Inch also shared information about the five students at a student government meeting Wednesday. Those students will “need to return to their country of origin at some point between zero and 60 days,” Inch said.
The university is working to connect the affected students with immigration attorneys, making sure international students are informed of their rights, and is “monitoring the situation for our international employees,” Inch said in his email.
Inch’s email did not identify the students or their countries of origin. Most information about the students could not be shared due to privacy laws, he said.
The University of Minnesota also provided few details about its students, citing privacy laws, but said it was providing “personalized support related to visa processing, international travel, or other related topics.”
“International students and scholars have been and will always be an essential part of the University of Minnesota community,” the University of Minnesota said in its statement.
A student visa allows an international student to enter the United States, but once they arrive, it is their student status, rather than their visa, that determines whether they can stay lawfully. If a student loses their legal student status, they can be subject to removal proceedings. Typically, a university can terminate student status if the student fails to maintain a full course load or has been expelled. DHS can also terminate student status for a violation like working without authorization or changing to a different nonimmigrant status. It was not immediately clear in this case what led to the termination of the students’ status.
“One of the things that’s challenging about this is there’s not a really clear action step,” Inch said at the student government meeting. “There’s not a clear way to even find out what it is we need to defend against, or what it is we tell anybody how to defend or how to prevent this.”The news comes days after the revelation that an MSU Mankato student was detained by ICE last week on March 28, which Inch disclosed in a campus email sent Monday. That news came on the heels of the March 27 arrest of a University of Minnesota business graduate student from Turkey. The U student, Doğukan Günaydın, said in a lawsuit that he was detained without explanation, and has sued ICE and other government officials for his immediate release from jail.
ICE and DHS have not responded to Sahan Journal requests for comment about the arrests, or the latest developments at MSU Mankato.
The Mankato student detained by ICE last week has asked for privacy, according to members of the university community in touch with their family, and no information has surfaced publicly about their identity, country of origin or the reason for their arrest.
Inch shared more information about the arrest during Wednesday’s student government meeting, noting that it occurred at 11:30 a.m. near an off-campus residence where the student was living with his brother. MSU Mankato declined to share further information, citing privacy laws.
Jameel Haque, an associate professor of history and gender studies and the director of MSU Mankato’s Kessel Peace Institute, said the lack of information from ICE appeared to be deliberate.
“It seems like ICE is intentionally causing confusion and refusing to give any information to cause, basically, panic,” he said.
Cole Koets, a junior at MSU Mankato and president of the student group Mavericks for Change, said that international students are “terrified.”
“A lot of them are afraid to leave their dorms or go into public spaces where they might be detained for, ultimately, no reason,” he said.
Mavericks for Change is planning a rally against ICE next Wednesday.
Students United, an advocacy nonprofit representing students throughout the Minnesota State system, said in a statement that the arrested Mankato student was in good academic standing and had a valid student visa at the time of their detainment. Students United said the student is currently being held in Albert Lea, where ICE contracts with the Freeborn County jail to house its detainees.
Students United urged international students to be aware of their surroundings, know their rights and to check their visa status frequently.
MSU Mankato was nationally ranked in a 2024 report for its high number of international students — 15th on a list of all master’s-granting institutions in the country. The highest numbers of international students are from Ethiopia, Nepal, Japan, South Korea and India.
Recent high-profile ICE arrests of international students have struck fear into campuses across the country. In a March 28 press appearance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that he had been personally involved with revoking more than 300 visas, many of them student visas. He criticized international students who had been involved with pro-Palestinian protests. He also said that some people had their visas revoked due to criminal activity, rather than protests.
Haque said the Mankato student who was arrested was not involved in protests or a pro-Palestine encampment at the school last spring. “We really had no or little involvement from international students because they were worried about something like this happening anyway,” he said.
Koets, whose group Mavericks for Change led the pro-Palestine protests, said the university confirmed to him that none of the students who were arrested or had their status revoked were members of his group.
Inside Higher Ed reported Wednesday that university officials across the country have seen student status revoked in the SEVIS system without warning, and that many of the students affected are from Middle Eastern or majority-Muslim countries. Colorado Public Radio reported that 10 international students in that state had their student status revoked, at least half of whom were Middle Eastern.
Haque declined to give specifics on the students who lost their student status in Mankato, but said that national trend tracks with what he is seeing.
The campus community stands with the international students and their constitutional rights, he said. Still, he described widespread fear on campus.
“Mankato is pretty remote,” he said. “We’re not Columbia. We’re not Harvard or Yale. For us to be targeted like this, it means that they’re targeting everybody.”
