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Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday evening that the Department of Homeland Security would start to revoke Chinese students’ visas — a directive that could put more than a thousand Harvard students at risk.
According to the Harvard International Office, 1,282 students from China currently study at Harvard. More than 277,000 Chinese international students studied in the United States last year.
In a press release, Rubio wrote that the DHS would move to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”
Rubio did not specify what fields of study would be considered “critical” — and a spokesperson for the State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Harvard spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Wednesday announcement ramps up the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive campaign against international students in America, which has painted them as threats to national security or local order.
The Trump administration revoked more than 1,800 student visas in April before restoring their statuses on April 25. A federal judge issued a nationwide injunction last week temporarily preventing the Trump administration from reversing the reinstatements after a group of international students who were affected by the terminations challenged them in a lawsuit.
In recent days, Trump and Harvard have squared off over the University’s authorization to host international students. The DHS terminated Harvard’s Student Exchange and Visitor Program certification last week, but the move was temporarily blocked by a federal judge.
The judge is set to decide whether to grant Harvard a preliminary injunction, extending the halt on the DHS’s order, at a Thursday hearing held in Boston during Harvard’s Commencement exercises.
Rubio’s announcement follows an intensification of anti-China rhetoric from the Trump administration.
When the DHS terminated Harvard’s SEVP certification, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem castigated Harvard for research collaborations with Chinese scholars, though she did not single out Chinese international students.
The first Trump administration revoked more than 1,000 visas belonging to Chinese students and scholars in 2020, saying they had ties to the Chinese military that posed a national security risk.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.
—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.
