Two international University of Virginia alumni have had their visas revoked. That’s in addition to a currently enrolled UVa student whose visa revocation was announced earlier this month.
The trio join more than two dozen international students and recent graduates of Virginia colleges who have lost their legal right to live and study in the U.S. amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, which has so far targeted more than 1,000 students nationwide.
UVa disclosed the two alumni had their visas revoked on Wednesday on a university webpage providing updates on recent federal actions.
The university has not shared the identities or nationalities of the two alumni, nor did it offer an explanation as to why immigration officials targeted them.
“We do not know the reason behind any of the visa cancellations that have affected one currently enrolled University of Virginia student and two alumni,” university spokeswoman Bethanie Glover told The Daily Progress in an email.
The Wednesday announcement was not issued publicly the way UVa announced the visa revocation of the currently enrolled student.
On April 4, the UVa Global office issued a “Message to UVA’s International Community” announcing that an international student had been stripped of their visa. The announcement did not mention the two alumni, even though UVa said Wednesday it knew of all three visa revocations on or before April 4.
Asked to clarify, Glover said that it was simply part of a communications strategy.
“Our original messaging on April 4 was intended to communicate the impact on currently enrolled students to the on-Grounds international community,” she said. “Alumni were recently added to provide a more complete picture of the impact of the visa cancellations on UVA.”
Since the April 4 announcement, UVa has not offered any further details regarding the status of the student or alumni, including whether or not they remain on U.S soil. Faculty members that have spoken with The Daily Progress have said they too are being "kept in the dark."
The two alumni who lost their visas were involved in "Optional Practical Training," a program of the F-1 student visa which allows international students to be employed in their field of study either before or after obtaining their degrees.
While neither federal nor university officials have said why the UVa student and alumni were targeted, international students have become an increasingly easy target for a Trump administration eager to ramp up deportations. More than 1,000 students at 160 U.S. colleges have been stripped of their visas since President Donald Trump took office, according to the Associated Press. The White House has said it is targeting those who “espouse hateful ideology” and revoking student visas of all “Hamas sympathizers" on college campuses.
Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian activist who was a Columbia University graduate student until December of last year, was the first to be thrust into the national spotlight after Trump officials accused him of engaging in “activities aligned to Hamas,” a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization responsible for the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that claimed the lives of 1,200 people in Israel and the subsequent war that has killed more than 50,000 people in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
UVa became the first college in Virginia to publicly announce an international student’s visa had been revoked. Since then, other universities across the commonwealth have done the same, including Virginia Tech, George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University. As of Thursday, the Trump administration has canceled the visas of 30 college students and alumni in Virginia.
Glover said she has not heard of any additional visa revocations at UVa since April 4.
“[We] will keep the federal information page updated with any further developments,” she said.
Virginia’s two senators, Democrats Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, have demanded answers from the Trump administration, asserting in a joint letter that the “sudden and unexplained revocations” of Virginia college students’ visas are causing “chaos.” The White House has not responded.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com