Resistance on a Visa: The International Student Struggle in Trump’s America

International students are living in a precarious limbo as the Trump administration indiscriminately strips them of their visas and rights. An international student in YDSA discusses how to continue to organize and resist under increasing authoritarian surveillance and threats. 

Most of us don’t realize the things we take for granted until they’re stripped away.

Last March, a French scientist was denied entry to the US after exchanging messages critical of Donald Trump. As an international student and YDSA member, I realized that could be me. 

I stared at the expiration date on my visa with dread. Knowing I would have to renew it very soon, I reluctantly scrubbed the hammer and sickle from my social media. I set everything to private. 

Messages from family and friends flooded in:

“Are you safe?” 

“Maybe lay low.” 

“Don’t post anything political.”

I couldn’t earnestly engage with or help my communities; my voice was shrinking by the day. That was when I truly grasped the urgency of the international student plight under Trump’s regime. We are caught in a double bind, expected to excel academically while being denied political expression, belonging, and basic safety. We are allowed in, but never fully welcome. 

Policing the American Dream

The American Dream has always been more fantasy than promise, a capitalist myth meant to sell the illusion of upward mobility while masking structural inequality. For international students and immigrants alike, that illusion is weaponized. They tell us that if we work hard, follow the rules, and stay silent, we too can belong. But belonging under capitalism is conditional, and under Trump’s regime, those conditions are enforced with increasing hostility.

The current wave of immigration policies makes this clear. The Department of Homeland Security has ramped up visa scrutiny, particularly for students from China, Iran, and other countries designated as “strategic threats” under national security review programs. Students report increased delays, denials, and requests for invasive documentation. Additionally, new travel restrictions, part of a June 2025 executive proclamation, have expanded the list of countries facing partial or full entry bans, further isolating international students from their families and support systems. Just last month, the State Department announced it halted scheduling new visa interviews for foreign students, leaving thousands in limbo and uncertain about their futures. 

These policies are framed as national security or administrative necessity, but the true message being sent is unmistakable: we are not welcome.

This message is clearer than ever in the repression of pro-Palestinian speech. International students who speak out against Israel’s assault on Gaza have faced threats of expulsion, visa revocation, and legal targeting. Executive Order 14188, signed in January 2025, empowers federal agencies to investigate and report campus “antisemitism,” a term now legally expanded to include most pro-Palestinian organizing, especially by “alien students and staff.” Students have already lost their visas or been deported after participating in protests or posting on social media. 

Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and lawful permanent resident, is a heartwrenching example. Detained by ICE in March 2025 for his pro-Palestinian activism, Khalil was barred from attending the birth of his son despite multiple requests for temporary release. After being detained for 104 days, his release was ordered by a federal judge on June 20, 2025. His detention, based on unsubstantiated claims of posing a threat to U.S. foreign policy, underscores the precariousness of non-citizen activists who dare to dissent.

To Speak or Stay

For many international student comrades, the urge to speak out or act is met with an equally powerful fear of surveillance, visa cancellations, immigration flags, or quiet disciplinary measures. Threats are built into every bureaucratic process we must navigate—from visa renewals to employment authorizations—and reinforced by universities eager to avoid political controversy.

The dominant image of the international student as affluent or elite and buffered by privilege ignores the reality that many of us come from working-class families. Our presence here is not proof of wealth, but of sacrifice. In a capitalist system that commodifies education and demands obedience, international students are welcomed as sources for tuition revenue, research labor, and institutional prestige, but not as full participants in civic or political life. In the eyes of the state and the institution, we’re workers, not citizens.

This brings about a moral dilemma that can weigh heavily on those who face legal precarity. Silence out of fear is often read as complicity, but for international students, it is more accurately a tactic of survival. The moral burden of inaction exists alongside the very real danger of institutional and state retaliation.

Yet, fear doesn’t render us powerless. International students have to rethink what activism looks like when visibility comes with risk. Even when speech is not safe, there are ways to show solidarity and act without being exposed—and that, too, is resistance.

Underground Strategies for International Students

With anti-ICE protests gaining momentum across Los Angeles, many international student comrades are asking the same question: How can I show up without putting myself in danger?

For international students, public protest can trigger surveillance, visa delays, or even deportation. But there are ways to resist that don’t require putting your name, face, or immigration status on the line.

1. Organize behind the scenes. Help plan protest logistics, spread information through back channels, or liaise between student groups. Be the one making sign-up forms, coordinating rides, or securing space. Not all leadership is visible.
2. Use secure communication. Protect yourself by using encrypted apps (like Signal), turning off location tagging, and avoiding using university emails when discussing political work.
3. Support the frontline safely. Provide supplies. Monitor safety from afar. Make sure others know their rights.  Offer translation or note-taking services, emotional support, or legal research. If accessible to you, donate. You don’t need to be on the frontlines to help.
4. Use anonymity intentionally. Publish zines, petitions, articles, or infographics under collective names. Speak through the group, not as an individual.
5. Choose where you’re safest. Some spaces are less policed than others. Student cultural centers, cultural clubs, and affinity groups can be great organizing spaces for international students to support broader struggles with relative safety.

Staying cautious isn’t a betrayal of the cause, it’s an act of care for yourself and your communities. Resistance doesn’t disappear when it moves indoors or online, it adapts. And in that adaptation, there’s power.

Many of us came to this country not as the wealthy, but as the hopeful. Some of us are the only siblings from a large family who could leave. Some of us carry the weight of generations—parents who sacrificed everything so we might get a chance they never had. We are not privileged exceptions. We are the global working class in motion.

And even under surveillance and censorship, even as our rights are being stripped away, we speak. We organize. We refuse to disappear.

We are here, and we have every right to be here. To speak out. To demand more. To fight back.