Update: This story has been updated to include clarifications UMass Amherst published to its website Sunday, stating that the student visa revocations have no known connection with either the university’s federally mandated participation in active civil rights investigations or with students’ activism.
Five international students enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Amherst had their visas revoked and student status terminated by the federal government this week, according to a statement issued by the school Friday night.
The announcement came just one day after UMass spokesperson Emily Gest told The Shoestring that the state’s flagship public university has cooperated with the federal government in providing student education records to the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights in connection with its civil rights investigations. However, the university later clarified that “these visa revocations have no known connection with either the campus’ federally mandated participation in active OCR Title VI complaint processes or with students’ engagement in activism.”
“To be crystal clear, UMass Amherst did not play any role in the federal administration’s unilateral action in terminating the status of our UMass Amherst students,” the university said in a statement Sunday. “In each of the cases in which the federal government revoked the visas and terminated the non-immigrant statuses of UMass Amherst students, UMass Amherst was not asked for information in advance by the federal government, did not provide information concerning the revocations to the federal government, and was not notified by the federal government of these status terminations.”
The Office of Civil Rights’ own policies allow schools to replace names with code numbers, for which the school holds the keys, in order to protect the confidential nature of the records.
On March 10, the Trump administration announced that UMass and 59 other colleges and universities were under increased scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Education and other federal agencies that comprise the Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, formed at the direction of President Donald Trump.
The newly reported visa cancellations signal a potential shift in focus by the federal government on public colleges and universities, citing concerns about antisemitism.
On Friday at almost 8 p.m., UMass Amherst Chancellor Javier Reyes wrote to the campus community that “throughout the course of this week and as of tonight, five international students have had their visas revoked and student statuses terminated by the federal government.” The university only learned about some of those revocations that evening, he said.
“In each of the five cases, the students’ legal status to remain in the United States has been revoked,” Reyes said. “The university was not notified by federal authorities of these status revocations and only became aware as a result of proactive checks in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) database. We will continue monitoring SEVIS for further updates.”
Until this week, most of the schools that have faced sanctions from the joint task force have been elite private universities. Columbia University, for example, had $400 million in federal grants cancelled. A day after hundreds protested Harvard University’s decision to fire the leaders of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies due to funding threats from Trump, Harvard suspended its Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and prohibited it from holding events on campus for the remainder of the academic year, as reported by Teen Vogue editor Lex McMenamin.
On Thursday, a faculty organization for the University of California system announced that the Office of the President of UC had disclosed contact information of 850 UC faculty members after being subpoenaed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as part of its investigation of antisemitism claims at UC campuses. The faculty members had signed an open letter expressing concern about “recent events in Israel and Gaza” and a petition expressing concern about antisemitism on campus, according to the announcement.
On March 25, Laura Meckler, an education reporter for The Washington Post, broke a story about the Department of Education directing attorneys in the Office for Civil Rights to “collect the names and nationalities of students who might have harassed Jewish students or faculty.”
The following day, Department of Homeland Security agents apprehended Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish national who was maintaining a valid F-1 student visa as a doctoral student at Tufts University in Boston. On Friday, a federal judge ordered that Öztürk be moved to Vermont after she was briefly held at an immigration detention facility in Louisiana.
While Tufts, like UMass Amherst, is listed among the 60 schools under scrutiny from the antisemitism task force, it is not clear why. Neither the Department of Education nor Tufts could be reached for comment last week. The Department of Education’s civil rights website, where information about Title VI complaints is typically hosted, has not been updated since approximately Jan. 15.
In his statement Friday, Reyes, the UMass chancellor, said that over the past several days, reports have emerged of international student visas being revoked by the Department of State.
“These revocations are troubling on several levels,” Reyes said. “These actions have been attributed by federal authorities to alleged incidents, in some cases, as minor as off-campus traffic violations.”
When asked the day before whether UMass complied with a federal request to provide names of students, Gest said that “the university must share data with the federal government on a regular basis.”
“The University would not decline a lawful demand for student education records from the federal government or refuse to comply with a court order,” she wrote.
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“UMass Amherst has no evidence that information it was required to provide to the Department of Education in the course of any complaint process in this or any previous administration has any relationship to any revocation and/or termination impacting the immigration statuses of any UMass Amherst student,” the university said in its follow-up April 6 statement.
On two previous occasions, UMass Amherst representatives told The Shoestring that there had not been any inquiries for student information related to the antisemitism task force.
On Feb. 5, in response to a public records request, Christine Wilda, the university’s associate chancellor for compliance, said that the school’s legal department, police department, human resources, and the Dean of Students Office all reported they were not aware of any warrants or subpoenas served to the school related to the immigration status of students or faculty.
Wilda also said that longstanding federal law did require the university to report “arrival, good standing, etc. periodically as matter of procedure and federal regulations.”
“The information on international students is entered into a system that only people that need to know have access to,” Wilda said. “The information is confidential.”
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act regulates the protection of students’ personally identifiable information, including students who are not U.S. citizens. However, students who have come to the United States on a visa are required by the Department of Homeland Security to authorize their school to release their personal information to DHS upon request.
On March 12, Gest told The Shoestring that the school was “not aware of any inquiries from DHS regarding international students or faculty.”
The Department of Education had previously opened two civil rights investigations against the school in 2024: one submitted on behalf of a student alleging antisemitism and one filed by Palestine Legal on behalf of 18 students.
The Department of Education reportedly opened a third investigation into UMass on March 17, according to the department’s website. It may be related to a complaint from 2024 filed by the Anti-Defamation League and Brandeis Center, which The Shoestring has previously reported on, but neither school nor government officials could be reached to confirm this by press time.
The Shoestring has filed public records requests for additional information related to inquiries by the federal antisemitism task force, but the school did not provide records by press time. On April 3, the school provided the letter sent to Reyes by Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education.
Under the state’s public records law, state agencies and local governments must respond to public records requests within 10 business days or request an extension. Since June 2024, this reporter has appealed requests sent to UMass Amherst and the UMass police on 27 separate occasions, mostly because of a lack of response from the university.
In January, the state ordered UMass to provide its internal policy document for its Campus Demonstration Response and Safety Team. The school provided the policy with extensive redactions, but due to a presumptive clerical error, these could be defeated simply by highlighting text with a cursor.
The policy directs staff to “be present at demonstrations or protests,” identify leaders of activist groups, and “document any disruptive activities in the most accurate way possible.” It also requires those monitoring political demonstrations to submit code of conduct referrals for any students it believes have violated school policy “regardless of whether or not the dangerous/disruptive behavior ceases.” A script provided to protest observers instead informs students of the conduct referral after a third verbal notice.
Because the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prohibits the release of student information, including disciplinary records, it is difficult to obtain information on how administrators have handled these disciplinary hearings.
The Trump administration has frequently categorized pro-Palestine student activists as supporters of Hamas, which the United States classifies as a terrorist organization. Many of the federal government’s policies towards actions it views as antisemitic mirror a Heritage Foundation plan called Project Esther.
In his statement, Reyes said he wanted to “assure every international student and scholar at UMass of our unwavering support as we confront this new reality.”
“Like so many others, I came to the United States to study through the student visa program,” he said. “We came to better ourselves, better our communities, and better the country that welcomed us as scholars.”
Reyes went on to say that the university is “working closely with the UMass system, the governor, the attorney general, and legislators at both the state and federal level to ensure that we remain true to our mission and that our legacy as a global campus lives on.”
An inquiry sent to Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell’s office last week did not receive a response.
Jonathan Gerhardson is a journalist in western Massachusetts.
Email: jon.gerhardson@proton.me
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