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Harvard International Office staff advised international students to reconsider traveling outside of the United States — and to be aware that students who engaged in pro-Palestine speech may face additional risk — at a “Know Your Rights” webinar Wednesday evening.

The webinar, led by HIO Director of Immigration Services Maureen Martin and Harvard Representation Initiative Staff Attorney Jason Corral, featured a 40-minute long question-and-answer session where students posed hypothetical scenarios to Martin and Corral.

Corral acknowledged that students at other institutions have been targeted based on pro-Palestine speech. Asked about international students’ right to protest, he said he would advise more caution than he did under Trump’s first term.

“I remember having these types of town halls back in 2017 and really saying, like, look, ‘You have a First Amendment right to speak,’” Corral said. “The difference is we have seen situations where it seems as though people’s visas are being revoked simply based on their speech or protests.”

Corral said students should vet their past public statements and academic work when assessing their travel risk.

The session occurred days before the Harvard International Office wrote in an email to international students that three Harvard students and two recent graduates had their student visas revoked amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on international students.

The HIO wrote that they were “not aware of the details of the revocations or the reasons for them” and that Harvard discovered the revoked visas during a “routine records review.” Many visa revocations so far have been tied to students’ involvement in pro-Palestine activism, but other students have had their visas revoked over minor infractions including traffic violations.

Colleges nationwide have generally not been notified before students at their institutions had visas revoked. Instead, college officials have typically discovered the revocations by running checks on the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, a database maintained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to track student visas.

Martin indicated that as of Wednesday, Harvard had not noticed any unusual changes to students’ statuses.

“We’re checking SEVIS on a regular basis for that kind of thing,” she said. “And we haven’t seen anything troublesome yet.”

So far, the Trump administration has revoked more than 300 student visas, Secretary of State Marco Rubio estimated on March 27.

At the session on Wednesday, Corral told attendees to “consider for themselves how essential their travel is and do a risk assessment based on the importance of the travel,” saying he felt “very concerned about international students traveling at this time.”

Wednesday’s session, which was announced by Harvard College Dean of Students Thomas G. Dunne in a College-wide email on Sunday, was the second such session the HIO has held in the past two weeks.

“We’ve heard from many concerned students,” Dunne wrote in the email, which addressed the increase in immigration enforcement actions under the Trump administration. “While there are still many unknowns, we want you to know that we are here for you — and make sure that you’re aware of the resources available to you.”

“It’s unfortunate we even have to have a session like this,” Martin said in her opening remarks. “But we’re hoping that maybe we can help allay some of your fears.”

In general, students whose entry visas are revoked may remain in the United States as long as they are enrolled in courses. But some students have also had their legal residency terminated in recent weeks — meaning they could be detained and deported.

There have been no reported immigration arrests of Harvard students, and Harvard has so far remained tight-lipped on how it would handle a situation like the sudden capture of Tufts University Ph.D. student Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish citizen, near her Somerville apartment.

On Wednesday, Corral and Martin advised international students to carry printouts of their I-20 and I-94 forms, which show their student visa eligibility and records of their entry into the U.S., respectively. They also recommended that students keep a picture of the biographical page of their passport on their phone, though they cautioned that students who carry their passports run the risk of losing them.

Corral also offered advice to students seeking to reenter the U.S. after traveling abroad. He noted that students on F-1 and J-1 visas — whom he said have the most limited rights at ports of entry — could have their devices searched by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.

“If you have a bunch of photos on your phone that suggest something that may be contrary to what they deem as a foreign policy interest and a reason for why they’re revoking these student visas — pictures of protests or something like that — that could go into their discretionary decision-making too,” he said.

But deleting images or messages could also raise CBP agents’ suspicions, he said.

In the event a student is approached by an immigration officer, Corral instructed students to “remain calm.”

“If they ask you about you in particular — if they say ‘Are you so-and-so?’ — I would say, ‘Look, I don’t want to talk to you,’” Corral said. “It’s really in your best interest to try to get your attorney over there as quickly as possible.”

He added that students in such a situation should continue saying that they do not want to talk with the officer, even if the officer tells them they do not have a right to an attorney.

“If they say, ‘Well, you don’t have the right to an attorney’ or they pressure you in some way that makes you feel like you need to give up your information, I would just repeat the same line over and over,” Corral said.

—Staff writer Samuel A. Church can be reached at samuel.church@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @samuelachurch.

—Staff writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at cam.srivastava@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @camsrivastava.