Trump 2.0: A year of disruption for US international education
Early executive orders
The early days of Trump’s second term saw him pass a slew of executive orders that would provide the basis for policies throughout 2025 and come to justify subsequent immigration crackdowns under the guise of protecting national security.
Most notably, the order pertaining to ‘Protecting the United States from foreign terrorists and other national security and public safety threats’ set the stage for enhanced screening processes and heightened vetting of prospective students’ social media accounts.
What would become one of the most consequential of Trump’s directives for international students in the US was Executive Order 14188, which vowed to take “forceful and unprecedented steps” to combat antisemitism on US campuses.
Trump’s student deportation campaign
Scores of international students were caught up in the administration’s so-called fight against antisemitism, which was used to justify widespread student arrests, detentions and deportations, including the high-profile case of Fulbright scholar Rümeysa Öztürk whose targeting by plain-clothed officers was captured on surveillance cameras.
What came to be known as the government’s student deportation campaign was since ruled illegal by a federal judge, who issued a scathing ruling against the administration and emphasised international students’ “unequivocal” rights to free expression.
Across spring, thousands of students’ SEVIS statuses were terminated for reasons ranging from pro-Palestinian expression to minor traffic offences.
While a major policy U-turn saw the reversal of many terminations, Trump’s targeting of international education saw no sign of slowing, with the State Department recently declaring it had revoked over 8,000 international student visas as of January 2025.
Suspended visa interviews and enhanced vetting
Perhaps the most consequential policy for international enrolments this year was Trump’s shock suspension of new student visa interviews on May 27, 2025 – the peak time for student visa issuance.
While initially intended to last several days, it wasn’t until the end of June that appointments were back up and running, as applicants were advised to set social media profiles to ‘public’ as the government implemented enhanced vetting measures.
The fallout from the near-month long visa freeze was extensive, with students in key markets reporting delays and cancelled appointments long into the summer. It was widely identified as one of the primary causes of the 17% decline in new international enrolments recorded this academic year.
Travel bans and targeted policies
In June, the government announced an all-out travel ban on the citizens of 12 nations, placing partial restrictions on a further seven. Crucially, students from all 19 nations were barred from studying in the US.
Trump invoked his January 20 executive order about protecting the US from foreign terrorists and framed the policy as a national security measure – the same rationale used to extend the ban to a further 20 countries and the Palestinian Authority in December 2025.
While Chinese nationals are not impacted by the travel ban, the country has come under attack from the administration, most explicitly when secretary of state Marco Rubio vowed to “aggressively revoke” the visas of Chinese students in the US.
Though the rhetoric never materialised into concrete policy, institutions have come under scrutiny for alleged links to the Chinese Communist Party – an accusation peddled by homeland security secretary Kristi Noem against Harvard in her attempt to bar international students enrolling at the university.
Trump vs. Harvard University
The administration’s long-running feud with America’s oldest university has seen the government freezing billions of dollars of research funding – a move recently ruled unlawful by a federal judge – and several attempts to bar Harvard’s international enrolments, which the university is currently fighting in the courts.
Since Harvard refused to bow to government demands in April 2025 including reporting on international students and ending DEI policies, Trump’s ongoing assault on the university has dominated sector headlines and become a focal point of his broader mission to reshape US higher education.
The ‘Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education’
In October 2025, nine top-tier institutions received a compact from the White House proposing a 15% cap on colleges’ international undergraduate enrolments, among other demands, in return for preferential access to federal funding.
Despite the offer being expanded nationwide, to the relief of the sector, very few institutions openly endorsed the compact, which failed to become federal policy.
Study abroad
Cultural and educational exchange programs have not been spared by the administration, with State Department exchange funds withheld for nearly two months in what was initially intended to be a 15-day pause at the start of 2025.
To the sector’s shock, in August, $100m worth of FY25 grants were unexpectedly scrapped by the administration – funds that had already been approved by Congress.
The legally questionable move kickstarted a 10k-wide campaign to save US study abroad, and while ECA is purportedly still working to ‘unpause’ the grants, The PIE understands the money is yet to reach recipients.
Meanwhile, new legislation proposed by Congress last week allocated $667mil for exchange programs this fiscal year. While the sum falls $74 million short of the current funding level, the proposals have been welcomed as an important sign of bipartisan support for the sector.
H-1B visas
A MAGA row over H-1B visas thrust the workstream into the political spotlight in the days prior to Trump’s January 2025 inauguration, and despite multiple threats, it wasn’t until the end of the year that any policy changes were implemented.
Prior to the largely anticipated move to overhaul the H-1B visa process in favour of higher earners, the White House announced in September a new $100,000 fee on H-1B petitions, sending US employers into turmoil.
While the administration later clarified international students changing status in the US would be exempt from the fee, it drew widespread criticism and three legal challenges, with a judge recently ruling in Trump’s favour in the first decided case.
OPT & Duration of Status
Optional Practical Training (OPT) and Duration of Status have been threatened on multiple fronts by policymakers this year.
While both currently remain intact, incoming changes restricting the post-graduation work stream and setting time limits on student visas are widely expected by experts, with both sure to further shake students’ confidence in the US as a study destination.
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