Many University of Maryland international students are anxious after U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent mass deportation threats and executive orders to intensify visa screenings.
Since his first term in 2016, Trump has implemented several measures targeting immigrant communities, including his 2017 travel ban on multiple majority-Muslim countries and Jan. 20 executive order to strengthen the vetting and screening process for visa applicants.
International students at this university have expressed concerns about how recent policies may affect their ability to stay in the United States and called on this university to provide more support.
Rose Ying, a member of Graduate Student Government’s international student affairs committee, said the international student community fears that “any little step out of line” may lead to deportation. After November’s election, international students had conversations about how to keep themselves safe, she said.
“It all came from a place of fear and anxiety that people’s lives would get completely upended,” the neuroscience and cognitive science doctoral student said.
Nearly 4,900 international students attend this university, more than 77 percent of whom are graduate students, according to university data.
Trump’s Jan. 20 order also calls on the secretary of state to screen “regions or nations with identified security risks” and evaluate all visa programs to ensure that “foreign nation-states or other hostile actors” do not harm the U.S.
Ebenezer Akansah, a public administration graduate student from Ghana, said his visa process took more than a year, but was smooth once he finally secured an interview in 2023. Akansah, an International Student Advisory Board member, said enhanced screening for visa interviews would make it more challenging for people to enter the country.
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Akansah said he wants to return to Ghana after he finishes school because the recent directives will make it difficult for international students to stay in the U.S. for an extended time.
In an email sent Dec. 20, assistant vice president and chief human resources officer Rythee Lambert-Jones encouraged students travelling abroad during winter break to return to the country before Trump’s second inauguration on Jan. 20.
The guidance was a precaution to ensure students didn’t have trouble returning, as some did several years ago, university president Darryll Pines told The Diamondback.
In a campuswide email on Feb. 13, Pines recognized the uncertainties that the shifting federal landscape is causing. His email recommended international students visit this university’s international student and scholars office for help.
This university referred to the Feb. 13 campuswide email in response to The Diamondback’s request for comment.
Trump also signed an executive order on Jan. 28 that would pause all federal grants and loans. The order led to panic from many students due to its uncertain impacts on financial aid, The Diamondback previously reported.
A federal judge temporarily paused the order the next day, the Associated Press reported.
Anna Lytkina, an education graduate student, said she is worried about the impacts of federal funding cuts on international students’ scholarships, which cover tuition and living expenses.
Lytkina, who is from Russia, came to this university through the Fulbright Program, a grant primarily funded by Congress that enables international graduate students to study in the U.S.
Though Lytkina hopes her scholarship will be unaffected before she graduates in May, she said she questions if there will be unexpected changes.
Trump signed an order on Jan. 29 to “prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators” of antisemitism on college campuses. The order also threatened to “deport Hamas sympathizers and revoke student visas.”
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The Jan. 29 order came after more than a year of protests and demonstrations on college campuses since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Hamas killed more than 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages in its 2023 attack, according to the Associated Press.
Israel declared war the next day and its military has since killed more than 48,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the outlet reported Tuesday.
Israel and Hamas agreed to a temporary ceasefire deal in January, according to the Associated Press. The deal’s first phase ended on March 2 and both parties have yet to negotiate new terms, the outlet reported.
Multiple international students who spoke to The Diamondback under anonymity due to fear of retaliation expressed concerns about their freedom of speech and ability to critique the U.S. government under Trump’s new administration.
A human computer interaction graduate student from India who requested to remain anonymous told The Diamondback she had a “breakdown” after Trump’s inauguration because she did not know what the next few months would hold.
The student said they had vocally criticized United States’ role in supporting Israel’s “genocide in Palestine.” They said they have felt helpless because of how much they have previously expressed political opinions online.
“It feels like something as basic as your free speech rights have been taken away,” the student said.
Lytkina said a Q&A session or other university-hosted meetings would be helpful because international students “want to see not only words, but actions.”
“A lot of things work very, very differently for us,” Lytkina said. “That’s why you want to have maybe more support. You want to be more heard and more seen.”
