The Trump administration has turned campaign promises to target universities into devastating action, pulling hundreds of millions in federal funds from Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. On Monday, the Trump administration went after Harvard, the world’s wealthiest university, announcing that it would review about $9 billion in contracts and multiyear grants. It accused the university of failing to protect Jewish students and promoting “divisive ideologies over free inquiry.” Harvard had been bracing for the development. In recent months, it had moved cautiously, seeking compromise and, critics said, cracking down on speech. The approach riled some who worried that Harvard was capitulating at a moment of creeping authoritarianism. Though it remains unclear how much the university will actually lose, if anything, the move on Monday shows that the conciliatory approach hasn’t fended off its critics yet. In the days leading up to the Trump administration’s announcement, faculty members called on the university instead to more forcefully defend itself and higher education more broadly. In a letter, more than 700 faculty members called for Harvard to “mount a coordinated opposition to these anti-democratic attacks.” “As much as a body blow from the administration would hurt us, Harvard has the capacity to withstand the blow,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political science professor who circulated the letter. But a lot of money could be in question, and the stakes at Harvard underscore the excruciating dilemma faced by leading universities and civic institutions, from law firms to nonprofits: Should they work to protect themselves, as many seem to be doing, or stand on principle? “That every-man-for-themselves response is about to cost us our democracy,” said Dr. Levitsky, who studies authoritarian regimes. As President Trump’s inauguration approached, Harvard hired Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm with deep ties to Mr. Trump. On the first full day of the Trump presidency, the university announced it was adopting a highly debated definition of antisemitism — which labels certain criticisms of Israel, such as calling its existence racist, as antisemitic — a move encouraged by the new administration but slammed by free speech advocates. As the spring went on, pro-Palestinian actions spurred campuswide messages, even as Harvard remained quiet when a former Israeli prime minister visited and joked about giving student hecklers pagers, said Ryan Enos, a Harvard political science professor. (The comment was an apparent reference to the exploding pagers Israel used to target Hezbollah last fall.) Under pressure, Harvard recently suspended a partnership with a Palestinian university while agreeing to start a new partnership with an Israeli one. Then last week, two leaders of Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies were pushed out of their positions after a Jewish alumni group complained about programming, according to faculty members. To some faculty members, the move was more evidence that Harvard was capitulating at a moment of creeping authoritarianism. “It’s pretty transparent what’s going on,” Dr. Enos said. “Harvard is trying to put on a posture that mollifies its critics.” Many say Harvard’s actions make sense, given the money at stake. And to many on the right and even some on the left, Harvard’s recent actions are a correction. Harvard has often been criticized by conservatives who say that left-leaning politics permeate the campus and make it hard for different views to be heard. For years, it has also become a target for conservatives who say efforts to make higher education more inclusive of racial minorities have been excessive. Harvard, along with the University of North Carolina, was drawn into a Supreme Court case over its consideration of race in admissions, for instance. It ultimately lost in the conservative-leaning court, leading to a national ban on race-conscious admissions. Last year, amid pressure, Harvard’s largest division ended a requirement that job candidates submit statements about how they would contribute to diversity. As the war in Gaza set off student protests and debate over university responses, some have pushed for the federal government to use its power, and its purse strings, to force additional change. Others, like Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of the Harvard Medical School, have called the Trump administration’s attack on higher education “an existential threat.” But Dr. Flier said the assault was occurring in part because of higher education’s failure to take seriously the free expression concerns of conservatives and even political moderates. He said that Harvard and other universities had tolerated behavior toward Jewish students that they would not have if it had been directed at other minorities and had generally created an unhealthy environment for the expression of heterodox views. Dr. Flier said Harvard had begun to address some of those issues — moving away from commenting on political issues, for example — before Mr. Trump took office. “We were beginning to go in the right direction,” Dr. Flier said. “There was a vibe shift. And an awareness shift. And that all got shifted again by the Trump administration’s massive, uncalled-for, pretextual attacks.” Bowing to federal pressure has not proved to be a solution, either. Last week, Columbia’s interim president resigned — the second leader there to do so in a year — amid intense internal and external pressure over the Trump administration’s demands on the university. Dylan Saba, a lawyer with Palestine Legal, noted that Columbia had fallen in line with many Republican demands before Mr. Trump took office and had taken an especially aggressive stance against pro-Palestinian activists, including denouncing scholars by name at a congressional hearing. It did not placate Mr. Trump and produced even more student activism, Mr. Saba said. “In seeking a painless way out, they ended up producing a much bigger conflict,” he said. Amid the speed and chaos of Mr. Trump’s assault on higher education, colleges have not figured out how to respond in a way that will satisfy their antagonists — if there is one. Some faculty members wonder whether the conciliatory approach has only emboldened critics. Even for universities with sizable endowments, the financial hits the administration has promised could be painful. Harvard’s endowment is more than $50 billion. Johns Hopkins University, which also has a large endowment, recently announced it would cut more than 2,000 employees because of reduced federal funding. Harvard did not respond to a request for comment. Earlier this spring, Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, wrote in communication to the campus that community members should “rest assured that Harvard is working hard to advocate for higher education in our nation’s capital and beyond.” Harvard has been a longtime target of Republicans who want to take it down a notch. In the days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 people, student groups released a statement holding Israel responsible for the assault. In response, Harvard’s president at the time, Claudine Gay, released a tepid statement denouncing the attack. Amid pressure, she followed it with a stronger message, but Harvard was one of three colleges whose leaders were questioned by Congress in 2023 about their efforts to combat antisemitism. A month after a widely panned performance, Dr. Gay was out. Ongoing protests, unrest and lawsuits have kept Harvard in the public eye, though they have quieted considerably since last spring. In the fall, pro-Palestinian demonstrators staged a silent “study-in” in a library, and the university temporarily banned them from the space. In lawsuits over the last year, Jewish students said that Harvard had allowed hatred and discrimination to go unchecked and that it still had a long way to go to fix endemic problems. They accused Harvard of ignoring antisemitism, by allowing chants like “from the river to the sea” and the showing of the film “Israelism,” a documentary critical of Israel. This winter, Harvard was placed on a list of 10 universities the Trump administration was taking special interest in. “The sharks circle when they smell blood in the water,” said Kenneth Roth, a former director of Human Rights Watch and a fellow at Harvard, who wants Harvard to fight better to allow robust debate and academic freedom. The announcement on Monday did not make it clear what other steps the university would have to take to be in good standing with the federal government. Some universities have been more vocal amid the federal onslaught. A Georgetown law dean responded forcefully earlier last month to Washington’s top prosecutor, a Trump loyalist, saying his efforts to control the university’s curriculum were unconstitutional. Brown’s president wrote recently that it would defend its academic freedom in the courts, if need be. And Princeton’s president recently condemned the attack on Columbia, calling it “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s.” Other universities also appear to be taking a more cautious approach. Last month, the University of California system announced it would end the use of diversity statements in hiring — a practice that had been under fire from conservatives for years. Michael V. Drake, the president, had told faculty leaders he didn’t want the system to be “the tallest nail” and stand out, according to Sean Malloy, a professor who was in the meeting. A spokesman for the system said the meeting was meant to be confidential, and that Dr. Drake was relaying a sentiment he had heard on a trip to Washington. And Dartmouth College recently hired a former chief counsel for the Republican National Committee as its vice president and general counsel, to help “understand and navigate the legal landscape surrounding higher education,” President Sian Leah Beilock said in a statement. Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor, said it was only rational for Harvard, or any university, to try to negotiate a solution with the Trump administration, given the arbitrary nature of Mr. Trump’s actions against higher education and the number of jobs on the line. Professor Feldman, who has criticized Mr. Trump’s actions, said Harvard had acted responsibly, given the political climate. “Sometimes people who are eager for the university to get up and make big statements have a slightly unrealistic conception of what the real-world effect of those statements would be,” he said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered diplomats overseas to scrutinize the social media content of some applicants for student and other types of visas, in an effort to bar those suspected of criticizing the United States and Israel from entering the country, U.S. officials say. Mr. Rubio laid out the instructions in a long cable sent to diplomatic missions on March 25. The move came nine weeks after President Trump signed executive orders to start a campaign to deport some foreign citizens, including those who might have “hostile attitudes” toward American “citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles.” Mr. Trump also issued an executive order to begin a crackdown on what he called antisemitism, which includes deporting foreign students who have taken part in campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. Mr. Rubio’s directive said that starting immediately, consular officers must refer certain student and exchange visitor visa applicants to the “fraud prevention unit” for a “mandatory social media check,” according to two American officials with knowledge of the cable. The fraud prevention unit of an embassy’s or consulate’s section for consular affairs, which issues the visas, helps screen applicants. The cable described the broad parameters that diplomats should use to judge whether to deny a visa. It cited remarks that Mr. Rubio made in an interview with CBS News on March 16: “We don’t want people in our country that are going to be committing crimes and undermining our national security or the public safety,” he said. “It’s that simple, especially people that are here as guests. That is what a visa is.” The cable specifies a type of applicant whose social media posts should be scrutinized: someone who is suspected of having terrorist ties or sympathies; who had a student or exchange visa between Oct. 7, 2023, and Aug. 31, 2024; or who has had a visa terminated since that October date. Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 Israelis and taking about 250 hostages. That ignited a war in which Israel has carried out airstrikes and a ground invasion of Gaza that have killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan health ministry estimates. The dates specified by Mr. Rubio in the cable indicate that one of the main aims of the social media searches is to reject the applications of students who have expressed sympathy for Palestinians during the war. Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? The cable also states that applicants can be denied a visa if their behavior or actions show they bear “a hostile attitude toward U.S. citizens or U.S. culture (including government, institutions, or founding principles).” Such wording could spur foreign citizens to self-censor many kinds of speech to avoid jeopardizing their chances of getting a visa. And U.S. consular officers could find it difficult to judge an applicant’s past statements and social media posts, especially if they do not know the proper context. Some foreign citizens who have a critical view of U.S. policies might forgo applying for a visa, which is a stated preferred outcome of Mr. Rubio’s. The requested visa types that would set off extra scrutiny are F, M and J — student and exchange visitor visas, the cable said. The details of the cable were first reported by The Handbasket, an independent news site. A State Department spokesperson, when asked for comment, said the agency did not discuss internal deliberations. They pointed out that in 2019, the department changed visa application forms to ask for information about social media accounts. On Tuesday, the former president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias, told reporters that the U.S. government had sent him an email saying it was suspending a visa in his passport that had allowed him entry to the United States. Weeks ago, Mr. Arias said on social media that Mr. Trump was behaving like “a Roman emperor.” Mr. Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, is the most prominent foreign citizen to have his visa revoked so far. As a senator from Florida, Mr. Rubio pressed the Biden administration’s State Department, run by Antony J. Blinken, to cancel the visas of students involved in campus protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Since becoming secretary of state in late January, Mr. Rubio has revoked perhaps 300 or more visas, many of them belonging to students, he told reporters last Thursday. He said he had been signing letters daily revoking visas. “My standard: If we knew this information about them before we gave them a visa, would we have allowed them in?” he said. “And if the answer is no, then we revoke the visa.”Earlier that day, responding to a reporter’s question, Mr. Rubio said the students were “going beyond demonstration. They are going and they are creating a ruckus. They are creating riots, basically, on campus.” “Every one of them I find, we’re going to kick them out,” he added. A State Department spokesperson said in an email in mid-March that “all available technology” was being used to screen visa applicants and visa holders. The spokesperson was replying to a question from The New York Times about whether the department was using artificial intelligence to scan databases and social media posts to find holders of visas that, in the eyes of Trump aides, should be revoked. After signing the revocation letters, Mr. Rubio sends them to the Department of Homeland Security. The department has dispatched agents to detain some of the foreign citizens who have been stripped of their visas or, in a few cases, their status as a permanent U.S. resident, commonly known as a green card holder. In early March, Mr. Rubio notified homeland security officials that he had revoked the permanent residency status of Mahmoud Khalil, 30, who had recently earned a graduate degree from Columbia University and was born in Syria, and Yunseo Chung, 21, an undergraduate at Columbia who was born in South Korea. He cited a statute of immigration law that allows him to recommend for deportation anyone whose presence would have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” Mr. Khalil is married to an American citizen, and Ms. Chung has lived in the United States since she was 7. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Last week, a half-dozen federal agents clad in black, some wearing masks, snatched Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University, off a street in Somerville, Mass., and took her to a detention center. Mr. Rubio said afterward that he had revoked her student visa. Ms. Ozturk wrote an essay for a student newspaper last year calling for university support of Palestinian rights and divestment from Israel. “At some point I hope we run out because we’ve gotten rid of all of them,” Mr. Rubio said last Thursday. “But we’re looking every day for these lunatics that are tearing things up.” He added, “I encourage every country to do that, by the way, because I think it’s crazy to invite students into your country that are coming onto your campus and destabilizing it.”

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The Trump administration said on Monday that it was reviewing roughly $9 billion in federal grants and contracts awarded to Harvard, claiming that the university had allowed antisemitism to run unchecked on its campus. In a statement on Monday, the administration said that it was examining about $256 million in contracts, as well as an additional $8.7 billion in what it described as “multiyear grant commitments.” The announcement of the investigation suggested that Harvard had not done enough to curb antisemitism on campus but was vague about what the university could do to satisfy the Trump administration. “While Harvard’s recent actions to curb institutionalized antisemitism — though long overdue — are welcome, there is much more that the university must do to retain the privilege of receiving federal taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars,” Josh Gruenbaum, a senior official at the General Services Administration, said in a statement. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “This administration has proven that we will take swift action to hold institutions accountable if they allow antisemitism to fester,” he added. “We will not hesitate to act if Harvard fails to do so.” In an email message to the Harvard community Monday evening, Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, noted that “we are not perfect” and said that Harvard would work with the federal government “to ensure that they have a full account of the work we have done and the actions we will take going forward to combat antisemitism.” “If this funding is stopped, it will halt life-saving research and imperil important scientific research and innovation,” he wrote. He also referenced his personal experience with antisemitism. “I have experienced antisemitism directly, even while serving as president, and I know how damaging it can be to a student who has come to learn and make friends at a college or university,” he said. He may have been referring to a poster showing him with horns and a tail that was displayed by a student group during Harvard’s encampment last year. Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The Harvard announcement followed the same template as a similar move against Columbia University last month. In its Monday announcement, the government did not fail to note the outsize role that Harvard plays in the public imagination, which makes it all the more tantalizing a target. “Harvard has served as a symbol of the American dream for generations — the pinnacle aspiration for students all over the world to work hard and earn admission to the storied institution,” Linda McMahon, the secretary of education, said in the announcement. “Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from antisemitic discrimination — all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry — has put its reputation in serious jeopardy.” The statement said the government would collaborate with contracting agencies to assess whether to issue stop-work orders for any of the contracts under review. It was not clear how the government had arrived at the figure of nearly $9 billion in grants for Harvard and its affiliates. But in his message, Dr. Garber indicated that it included money for hospitals affiliated with Harvard’s medical school, like Mass General Brigham, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Harvard and other universities have taken a number of steps in the wake of campus protests against the war in Gaza that some said veered into antisemitism, including highly contested chants by some pro-Palestinian demonstrators such as “from the river to the sea.” For example, Harvard adopted a definition of antisemitism that labels some criticism of Israel as antisemitic, a move praised by some Jewish students and faculty members but condemned by free expression advocates. It clarified that both Jewish and Israeli identities are covered by its anti-discrimination and anti-bullying policies. Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary and former Harvard president, called the review “a pretext for going after truth-seeking institutions that are threatening to would-be authoritarians.” Antisemitism has been a genuine problem at Harvard, he said. “Just because Donald Trump says something doesn’t make it wrong, and Harvard has been way too slow in responding to the antisemitism,” he said. “Harvard has made real errors,” Mr. Summers said. “But Harvard’s flaws do not remotely justify what is being threatened.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In the case of Columbia, the same three agencies — the Department of Health and Human Services, the Education Department and the General Services Administration — announced an investigation on March 3 into the school’s federal grants and contracts. They said the review was being conducted in conjunction with “ongoing investigations for potential violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.” (Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs receiving federal subsidies.) A few days later, the government stripped $400 million in federal funding from Columbia. In an effort to recover that money, Columbia acceded to an initial set of demands by the Trump administration, including strengthening its campus security force and imposing greater oversight of its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies department, among other concessions. Some faculty members fiercely objected to the concessions, and on Friday, the university replaced the interim president who had overseen the negotiations, Katrina Armstrong, with Claire Shipman, a journalist who had been the co-chair of the university’s board of trustees. The government has not said that the university’s funding will be reinstated. Harvard and Columbia were among the 10 universities that a federal task force said in February it was reviewing because of possible antisemitic activity on campuses. Soon after, Harvard said it was placing a freeze on staff and faculty hiring, given the uncertain environment. In a way, the Trump administration’s campaign against antisemitism was inspired by events at Harvard. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Immediately after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, a coalition of Harvard student groups, under the banner of Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups, wrote a letter declaring “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” At the time, Mr. Summers condemned the university’s leadership for not denouncing the student letter. Harvard’s president at the time, Claudine Gay, tried to make amends but was ultimately pressured to resign after testimony in front of a congressional committee. Under questioning, she said that whether students would be punished for antisemitic remarks, like advocating for genocide, depended on the context. In the following months, Harvard adopted a posture of institutional neutrality, saying it would no longer take positions on matters outside the university. Throughout the last school year, Harvard’s campus was rocked by demonstrations and confrontations between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students. At one point the university locked its gates to restrict who could enter Harvard Yard. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Students set up tents in an encampment last spring, and in the fall, the statue of John Harvard was vandalized with red paint. In October, pro-Palestinian demonstrators staged a silent protest at Widener library, the main library, where they taped signs like “free Palestine” and “Harvard Divest from Death” to their laptops. Harvard, like other universities, began to crack down with new rules on protests and speech. In recent months, the protest movement has been quieter. Shabbos Kestenbaum, a recent graduate who is suing Harvard for not taking antisemitism seriously, said he was “elated” on Monday. “This is precisely why I campaigned and voted for President Trump,” said Mr. Kestenbaum, who spoke at the Republican National Convention, said he had been in communication with members of the Trump administration. “If Harvard is not scared,” he said, “it simply means they’re not paying attention, because more accountability is on the way.” Harvard is among the world’s wealthiest institutions, with an endowment fund of more than $50 billion. Just recently, it announced that it was increasing its financial aid package for students, making tuition free for families with income of $200,000 and under. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The administration’s attack on universities has profound implications for the First Amendment and the government’s power to police protests, even when they occur on private campuses. There are also likely to be enormous economic and academic repercussions if, for example, the government cuts off substantial money to Harvard. Although private philanthropy is important, federal funding has long been the lifeblood of American academic research, and university leaders have warned that few institutions can continue marshaling the financial firepower for projects if Washington stops helping with the bills. Shutdowns, even temporary ones, of research programs could lead to new layoffs and hiring freezes that could trickle through local economies. But the administration came to power in January bristling with rage toward the most elite realms of American higher education. As candidates, Donald J. Trump depicted top universities as overrun by “Marxists, maniacs and lunatics,” and JD Vance derided them as “insane.” (Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance both hold degrees from Ivy League universities.) And Mr. Trump himself subsequently vowed on social media that “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests.” Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, warned Monday that the government was adopting a pattern of persecution. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “The administration has clearly found a playbook, and we’re seeing it again,” said Dr. Mitchell, who decried what he called the use of “unsubstantiated, amorphous claims of antisemitism against an institution and pre-emptive hostage-taking” tied to funding. The government, Dr. Mitchell noted, had long used a measured, back-and-forth process with colleges to address potential civil rights violations. He said he feared that the Trump administration’s strategy would undermine due process while threatening research and doing little to protect Jewish people on campuses. Other institutions targeted by the antisemitism task force were George Washington University; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; Northwestern University; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Minnesota; and the University of Southern California. Although much of the administration’s focus has been on what it sees as endemic antisemitism on American campuses, it also paused about $175 million in funding for the University of Pennsylvania because it had allowed a transgender woman onto its women’s swim team in 2022.

The University of Minnesota graduate student who was detained by immigration agents last week had not participated in campus activism or been outspoken about political issues, according to a lawsuit he filed on Sunday in federal court challenging the legality of his arrest. Instead, the issue that appears to have put the student, Dogukan Gunaydin, on the radar of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is more mundane: a 2023 drunken-driving case in which he pleaded guilty. After the university disclosed in a statement Friday night that a student had been taken into immigration custody, there was rampant speculation that the incident was related to pro-Palestinian activism, as has been the case at several other universities. Top elected officials, including Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and members of Congress, issued statements expressing concern, and students held protests on campus. But no evidence of activism emerged in the case of Mr. Gunaydin, 28, a Turkish citizen who was pursuing a master’s degree in business administration. In an emailed statement, the Homeland Security Department said that Mr. Gunaydin had been arrested after the State Department revoked his visa over the D.U.I. case. “This is not related to student protests,” the statement said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Immigration lawyers and other experts say they worry that the detention may signal a new front in the Trump administration’s approach to immigration enforcement. The government routinely revokes student visas over criminal cases, but typically the holder has the opportunity to challenge the revocation with the help of a lawyer, or is allowed to leave the country voluntarily. Mr. Gunaydin’s case was different. Another puzzling fact, according to the lawsuit, was that a computer system did not show his visa as revoked until several hours after he was taken into custody Thursday morning. Starting in 2015, the State Department issued guidance making clear that a drunken-driving arrest could be grounds to revoke a visa. Since then, according to Debra Schneider, an immigration lawyer in Minneapolis, many foreigners working or studying in the United States have received letters notifying them about the revocation of a visa after a run-in with the law. Yet, Ms. Schneider said, people on temporary work and student visas often manage to get visas reinstated, particularly if the circumstances of their cases are not egregious. Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “I have never had someone put in custody by ICE over a D.U.I.,” she said. In an emailed statement, the State Department said it would not discuss Mr. Gunaydin’s case, citing privacy considerations. But the department said: “The United States has zero tolerance for noncitizens who violate U.S. laws. Those who break the law, including students, may face visa refusal, visa revocation and/or deportation.” Hannah Brown, Mr. Gunaydin’s lawyer, did not respond to requests for comment on Monday. Mr. Gunaydin was taken into custody at approximately 9:30 a.m. Thursday after he stepped out of his St. Paul, Minn., residence to head to class, according to the lawsuit. The immigration agents drove him to the ICE office in St. Paul, where officials told the student that his visa had been “retroactively revoked,” according to the lawsuit. “Mr. Gunaydin feared he was being kidnapped,” the lawsuit said, adding that officials provided no information on why the visa had been revoked. That afternoon, roughly seven hours after Mr. Gunaydin was taken into custody, the online government registry of international student visa information showed that his visa had been revoked, according to the lawsuit. The system did not provide a clear explanation for the revocation but listed him as having failed to maintain legal status. That evening, Mr. Gunaydin was told that he would be seeing an immigration judge on April 8, and he was later booked into the Sherburne County jail, which is roughly 35 miles northwest of downtown Minneapolis. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT It was not clear on Monday whether Mr. Gunaydin had been formally placed in deportation proceedings. His lawsuit lists President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and several senior officials at Homeland Security as defendants. The suit also seeks Mr. Gunaydin’s release from custody, arguing that his arrest violated his constitutional right to due process, as well as administrative law, because his visa was still valid when immigration agents took him into custody. Carl C. Risch, who oversaw visa matters for most of Mr. Trump’s first term as an assistant secretary of state, said officials revoked visas as a result of arrests with “great frequency” over the years. But he suggested that it was unusual for agents to detain an international student over an old D.U.I. case without warning. Mr. Risch, who is now in private practice at Kurzban Kurzban Tetzeli & Pratt, said federal authorities would historically have sought to detain “someone who was considered to be a danger to the community, perhaps somebody with a very serious or concerning criminal background, ties to terrorist organizations.” If the government starts regularly detaining and deporting visa holders over misdemeanors like drunken-driving, Mr. Risch said, that would constitute a “change in policy, an escalation.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT On Monday, the president of another Minnesota school — Minnesota State University, Mankato — revealed that a student there was also taken into ICE custody last week. The president, Edward S. Inch, said that no reason was given for the arrest on Friday. He said in a statement that he had reached out to state and federal officials “to share my concern and ask for their help in curbing this activity within our campus community of learners.” The statement neither identified the student nor provided details of the events leading up to the arrest. Mr. Gunaydin was arrested on June 24, 2023, after a Minneapolis police officer described seeing a car maneuver erratically around 1:50 a.m., according to a charging document. Mr. Gunaydin told the officer that he had drunk vodka earlier that evening, according to the document. A breathalyzer test showed that he had an alcohol blood level of 0.17 percent — well over the 0.08 percent legal limit to drive. In March of last year, Mr. Gunaydin pleaded guilty to driving while impaired, a misdemeanor, according to court records. A judge ordered him to perform community service, attend a D.U.I. clinic and refrain from future traffic violations. After the conviction, the lawsuit said, Mr. Gunaydin was admitted into business school and awarded a scholarship. “He has maintained a full course load with a high G.P.A. and served in the M.B.A. Student Association,” according to the lawsuit.

Before stepping foot on Howard University’s campus, Skylar Wilson knew she would see more women there than men. But just how many more stunned her: Howard, one of the most elite historically Black colleges and universities in the nation, is only 30 percent men — 19 percent Black men. “I was like, ‘Wow,’” said Ms. Wilson, a 20-year-old junior. “How is that possible?” Howard is not unique. The number of Black men attending four-year colleges has plummeted across the board. And nowhere is this deficit more pronounced than at historically Black colleges and universities, or H.B.C.U.s. Black men account for 26 percent of the students at H.B.C.U.s, down from an already low 38 percent in 1976, according to the American Institute for Boys and Men. There are now about as many non-Black students attending H.B.C.U.s as there are Black men. The decline has profound implications for economic mobility, family formation and wealth generation. Raj Chetty, a Harvard economist who uses large data sets to study economic opportunity, has found that the income gap between America’s Black and white populations is entirely driven by differences in men’s economic circumstances, not women’s. The causes are many. Higher college costs, the immediate financial needs of Black families, high suspension rates in high school and a barrage of negative messages about academic potential all play roles in the decline of Black male enrollment and college completion. Howard estimates that its cost of attendance for undergraduates easily exceeds $50,000 a year. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “If we are serious about reducing race gaps in economic opportunity, household wealth, et cetera, then our attention should be squarely focused on economic outcomes for Black boys and men — period. Full stop,” said Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men.But now programs designed to nurture Black academic achievement may be dismantled by the Trump administration, which deems them “racist” diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Cultural centers, mentorship programs, work force recruitment activities and scholarship programs are all threatened by the White House’s promise to cut funding to universities that do not eliminate what it calls racial preferences. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump asked the Supreme Court to allow him to terminate more than $600 million in teacher training grants, which would decimate two of the Education Department’s largest professional development programs. Both were designed to place teachers in underserved schools and diversify the educational work force. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “It’s a perpetuating cycle,” said Dr. Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy, chief executive of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. “If you don’t see other Black male educators, then it’s hard for you to see yourself in that position.”On Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services targeted California medical schools for maintaining what Trump administration officials called “discriminatory race-based admissions,” though bolstering the number of Black doctors has long been a goal of the medical establishment. “Put simply, educational institutions may neither separate or segregate students based on race, nor distribute benefits or burdens based on race,” Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, wrote in a memo to universities in February. Black educators say burdens are already distributed unfairly. Society undermines Black men’s belief in their own potential, starting from early education and continuing through professional development, said Dr. Derrick Brooms, executive director of the Black Men’s Research Institute at Morehouse College, an elite, all-male H.B.C.U. in Atlanta. Colleges like Howard may be the starkest of manifestations. Payton Garcia, a Howard sophomore, recalled being one of three men in his introduction to philosophy class, which has about 30 students. Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “We did a Cuba trip,” he recalled. “I was the only male that was in the class.” Recent shifts in higher education, driven in part by conservative policies in Washington, have wrought large changes in predominantly Black colleges, positive and negative. The Supreme Court’s ban on race-based college admissions drove up interest in some H.B.C.U.s and strengthened the application pool overall, Dr. Brooms said. But he’s still concerned about the long-term trend. Dr. Brooms said at this point, Morehouse may have to re-evaluate its recruitment strategy, including looking abroad: “Perhaps there may be some Black men in Canada who may want to attend.” On campuses like Howard’s, the gender disparity is understood. Women run the place.“Everybody knows that the women dominate this campus,” said Tamarus Darby Jr., a 20-year-old sophomore at Howard. “You see predominantly women out here running for positions, and then you see their friends, young women, showing up for them and supporting them,” he said. “It’s different for the men.” According to students and faculty at Howard, Black male students can have a difficult time finding both themselves and a community. One night last October, young men gathered in small groups on the Howard yard and wrote down what they were most afraid of — “I have a fear of failure,” said Joshua Hughes, a senior who led the “burning of the fears” that night. “I have a fear of letting my family down. I have a fear of not living up to my full potential.” Some read their fears aloud before tossing their writings into a giant firepit as a drum line banged African djembes. In 2019, Calvin Hadley, then a senior adviser to Howard’s president, was asked how Howard could better engage men on campus. He put together a survey of students, faculty and staff, and then hosted several barbershop listening sessions. Something clicked. “We had these very detailed, emotional conversations around manhood, around masculinity, around relationships,” said Mr. Hadley, now Howard’s assistant provost for academic partnerships and student engagement. Male fears can work against college attendance, students said. Fears of failure may deter Black men from higher education, even as fears of letting their families down drive them prematurely into the work force, before their earning potential can be reached. Mr. Darby said many of his friends didn’t have parents or family who attended college, or they thought the costs were prohibitive. “So they were trying to find those other avenues to make money and to be successful, not thinking that college was the number one thing that was going to get you there,” he said. As a middle schooler, Jerrain Holmes, a 20-year-old sophomore, recalled thinking: “College? What is college?” He added, “I knew I just wanted a job.” But in his Detroit-area high school, he enrolled in a college readiness program, and it made all the difference. “As a general proposition, young men are arriving on college campuses less skilled academically than women,” Mr. Reeves said. “That’s even more true of men of color, Black men.” That leads to problems of completion, which are at least as significant as declining enrollment. The first year of college is crucial for male retention, and a lack of services can lead young men to feel isolated or that they don’t belong, Dr. Brooms said. “If you can show you can keep people, that folks can persist to graduation, that becomes a recruitment tool itself,” said Dr. Brooms. On a recent warm, breezy spring day on campus, Howard students lay on blankets, chatting. Some set up tables to sell merchandise, displaying the famed entrepreneurial “Howard hustle.” Others campaigned for student senate or royal court. The gender disparity was on the minds of the students.Christian Bernard, a 22-year-old senior from affluent Potomac, Md., is a third-generation legacy student. He was on the yard selling items from his clothing brand, emblazoned with the slogan “Worth It.” He started the brand amid the turmoil and grief of June 2020, after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the swell of Black Lives Matter demonstrations. He chose Howard for its soccer program and his family ties. Before injuries derailed his athletic career, he made strong friendships with his teammates. “There’s a lot of male camaraderie here at Howard,” he said. Those studying the challenges that young Black men face are careful to avoid a battle of the sexes. Women have faced historical challenges of their own. Some people perceive female gains as a threat to men in a zero-sum battle for resources and power. Mr. Reeves said that is a mistake, particularly when it comes to family formation. Asking the young men on campus how the gender gap affects dating will draw a sheepish grin. They understand their advantage. Young women are thinking about it too. “Those ratios,” said Nevaeh Fincher, a sophomore, can be “rough.” “A lot of the boys feel like they’ve got options,” Ms. Fincher said, “which, if we’re being honest, they do.” The lack of college-educated Black men could change family structures and bread winning patterns, placing more financial burdens on Black women. College-educated Black women already have higher lifetime earnings than college-educated white women because they work more years over the course of their lives, despite lower annual earnings, according to the Kansas City Federal Reserve. For young women who care about the future of Black America, in general, all of this is alarming. “We see a lot of school programs and districts that are giving up on students and giving up on Black men before they even give them a chance,” said Ms. Wilson. She’s seen it in the male students she mentors, who say their teachers don’t offer much encouragement. “They expect them to be bad,” she said. “They expect them to be problems.”

At the University of Pennsylvania last fall, someone splattered red paint on a statue honoring Benjamin Franklin, the school’s founder. Within hours, campus workers washed it off. But the university was eager to find the culprit. A pro-Palestinian group had claimed responsibility on social media. The university examined footage and identified a student’s cellphone number using data from the campus Wi-Fi near the statue at the time it was vandalized. Campus police obtained a search warrant for T-Mobile’s call records for the phone, and later a warrant to seize the phone itself. On Oct. 18 at 6 a.m., armed campus and city police appeared at the off-campus home of a student believed to be the phone’s owner. A neighbor said they shined lights into her bedroom window, holding guns. Then they entered the student’s apartment and seized his phone, according to a police filing. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Months later, the student has not been charged with any crime.The Penn investigation, which remains open, is one of several across the country in which universities have turned to more sophisticated technology and shows of police force to investigate student vandalism and other property crimes related to pro-Palestinian demonstrations. (The student who had his phone seized did not respond to an interview request.) The warrants were first reported by The Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn’s independent student newspaper, which filed a lawsuit after police did not initially file the warrants with a local court. Much of it happened even before President Trump returned to office. Since then, he has made clear he will use his power to force universities to take a hard line on protests. His administration has warned 60 universities that they could face penalties from investigations into antisemitism, and has also begun seeking to deport protesters. At least nine current or former students and one professor who were legally in the United States with visas or green cards have already been targeted, with at least one student being detained on the street by officials in plainclothes. And it pulled $400 million in funding from Columbia University, telling the school that it would not discuss restoring the money unless, among other things, campus security agents were given “full law enforcement authority” to arrest students. In response, the university said it had hired 36 “special officers” with that authority. Civil rights lawyers and legal experts said the moves were a fundamental shift in the way universities respond to student disciplinary cases. While arrests and searches are already often within the authority of many campus police agencies, recent tactics go beyond what has been the standard for campus security officers, said Farhang Heydari, an assistant professor of law at Vanderbilt University. Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Historically, Mr. Heydari said, campus police have tended to operate with discretion on matters that could affect students’ futures, in some cases not strictly enforcing the law. Campus officers might look the other way on matters like underage drinking, for example. If they enforced every law strictly, “everyone would be expelled, no one would be admitted to the bar or whatever,” he said, adding, “That would be horrible for the university.” A ‘Fundamental Shift’ The widespread protests and tent encampments of spring 2024 have subsided, but pro-Palestinian demonstrations have continued, often peacefully but sometimes including acts of vandalism. Under pressure from federal officials and community members alike, many universities have moved to embrace tougher and more sophisticated security tactics to quell protest activity. Some experts worry the tactics could endanger free speech and civil liberties, particularly in cases where students have had their property seized even though they have not been connected or charged with crimes. “It really does just seem to be an expansion in law enforcement power that maybe didn’t exist 20, 25 years ago,” said Saira Hussain, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates civil liberties protections online. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Universities have defended their tactics, saying they are necessary to protect students’ safety and combat discrimination. At Penn, the university said the apartment search was necessary to maintain order and safety. “Unfortunately, a small group of individuals, some of whom may be students, continue to take disruptive and at times illegal actions against the university community,” the school said in a statement. “They continue to flout policies and laws that they do not think apply to them, and then blame their own institution when they encounter consequences,” the university added. “Laws must be enforced uniformly and fairly and are not designed to be waived when they do not suit a particular viewpoint.” The New York Times reviewed documents in seven vandalism cases that involved search warrants to investigate student protesters. One has resulted in criminal charges.In one episode involving campus graffiti in November, a dozen law enforcement officers searched the family home of two George Mason University students who are sisters. Authorities said they found Hamas and Hezbollah flags and other materials displaying anti-American rhetoric and an expression indicating “Death to America,” as well as four weapons and ammunition. But the authorities indicated that the materials and guns belonged to other family members living at the home, according to court filings. The two women were barred from campus, but no charges have been filed. In an open letter to George Mason authorities, 100 faculty, students, politicians and political groups protested the decision to bar the students. The university’s president, Dr. Gregory Washington, said the search findings suggested that “something potentially more nefarious” was going on, according to an email he wrote to faculty obtained by The Times through a public records request. He also said the university was actively collaborating with “a number of three-letter agencies aimed at keeping our campus and quite frankly our country safe.” Dr. Washington also posted a public letter, and the university said it would have no additional comments on the case. In a statement it said that, in general, “when it becomes necessary for the university to bar a student from entering campus, or impose an interim suspension on a student organization, such actions are taken carefully, with cause, and as precautions to preserve the safety of the university community environment.” Concerns About Privacy At Penn, following a public outcry about the search, a committee review found that the police had behaved professionally. But the review raised questions about how such a search might cause “discomfort and even fear.” University police have sometimes cited social media posts to justify their warrant requests. But the posts are constitutionally protected speech, said Zach Greenberg, a First Amendment lawyer at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech group. He said the tactics could chill free expression. Most students involved in surveillance cases were reluctant to talk about their experiences. Many students involved in protests have had their identities exposed or faced harassment. “I’ve been doing legal work related to the right to protest for over 35 years, and I haven’t seen this kind of thing on college campuses,” said Rachel Lederman, senior counsel with the Center for Protest Law & Litigation.Ms. Lederman represents, Laaila Irshad, a third-year undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who had her cellphone seized by campus police. Ms. Irshad is asking a court to quash a warrant that led to the seizure. Almost six months after it was taken, it has not been returned and she has not been charged with a crime. In an email, Ms. Irshad said she felt “incredibly exposed” at the thought that the police could review all of the data on the phone, dating back to when she was in fifth grade. “Everything is open to them from my random messages with friends to my Google searches about health issues to my political musings to my super intimate messages with family,” she wrote. A university spokesman said the warrant was related to an ongoing vandalism investigation, but would not describe the vandalism itself. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT At least one warrant has led to a criminal case. At Indiana University Bloomington, a life-size sculpture of a former university president was vandalized with red paint on the anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel. After reviewing security footage, the university police obtained warrants to search a student’s car and cellphone. The investigator found photos of the statue covered in paint, and the student was charged with two counts of criminal mischief. Warrants but No Charges In several cases, students have not been charged with wrongdoing as a result of the warrants. In September, three officers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, arrived at the dorm room of Laura Saavedra Forero, a senior who had regularly participated in protests. Ms. Saavedra Forero’s lawyer, Jaelyn Miller, said she believed police officers targeted her client because she uses a wheelchair that made her easier to identify than other students. They obtained a search warrant for her cellphone and everything on it, arguing it most likely contained evidence about vandalism related to a protest. The university said the warrant was related to vandalism of 10 campus buildings on Sept. 19, but declined to answer additional questions “It’s very odd, for a low-level misdemeanor like the graffiti vandalism,” Ms. Miller said, “for U.N.C. to seek a search warrant against its own student, not because that student committed a crime, but purely because that student attended a protest and filmed at that protest.”

Oklahoma’s conservative Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, and its conservative Republican schools superintendent have appeared to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the years of Donald J. Trump, with the former sending Oklahoma guardsmen to the southern border and the latter stocking the state’s schools with Trump-branded Bibles. But when the superintendent, Ryan Walters, proposed finding the undocumented students in Oklahoma’s schools, Mr. Stitt said enough is enough. “When I saw them picking on kids, I thought that’s a step too far,” Mr. Stitt said in a recent interview in his office in the State Capitol. In an era of anything-goes politics on the nation’s right, the fight in Oklahoma may suggest there is an outer limit to what is acceptable, even for conservatives. Or it could offer a preview of the next frontier in the nation’s battle over immigration. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “It’s incredibly unfortunate that the governor has decided to undermine President Trump’s immigration agenda and take these type of swipes at him,” Mr. Walters said. “He’s attacking President Trump.” It began when Mr. Walters, the state’s elected superintendent of schools, proposed new rules that would require Oklahoma public schools to collect citizenship information from students. The proposed rules were approved by the state school board in January, and they are now being considered by the Oklahoma Legislature. But Mr. Stitt, no softy on immigration, lashed out immediately. He soon named replacements to the school board, whose members are appointed by the governor, so he could better resist proposals from the schools chief. Mr. Stitt has been a strong proponent of border security, sending troops to help patrol the Texas border and lining up to support Mr. Trump’s deportation efforts. But in going after school children, Mr. Stitt said that Mr. Walters — a former high school history teacher who was once a protégé of the governor — crossed a line. “I’ve never heard Trump talk about, ‘Hey, we’re going to go after kids,’” Mr. Stitt said. Mr. Stitt, who is in his final term as governor, said he had spoken with Mr. Walters and tried to talk him out of it. “You’re just trying to make a political statement, trying to get your name in the paper,” Mr. Stitt said he told him. “That’s why people hate politicians.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Walters, who has been mentioned as a potential candidate for governor next year, has not wavered.In his office in the state education building, he argued in an interview that his approach closely aligned with the thrust of Mr. Trump’s policies, such as ending automatic citizenship for nearly every person born on U.S. soil and allowing federal immigration agents to enter schools. An attack on the citizenship proposal, he said, was akin to an attack on the president. Mr. Walters’s goals seem contradictory. Gathering data on the number of migrant students in Oklahoma schools would help provide language services, he said. But he also said he wants to better calculate the cost of undocumented students to state taxpayers. “My concern are the taxpayers, the citizens of the country and of Oklahoma,” he said. “Those are the people that are here legally, that voted in the elections, that need to be protected.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT His office estimated around 5,000 migrant students attend state public schools, at a cost of about $200 million a year. Bills in several state legislatures, including in Texas and New Jersey, echo Mr. Walters’s efforts, as they seek to allow schools to collect tuition from migrant students. Such legislation, which would probably be challenged in court, appeared to be aimed at challenging the core of a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision that said states could not prevent undocumented children from attending public schools. That ruling has been a target of some Republicans in recent years, particularly as the balance of power on the Supreme Court has shifted in favor of conservatives. Mr. Walters said he favored overturning the precedent. Mr. Stitt said he did not. Jackson Lahmeyer, a pastor in Tulsa, Okla., and member of Mr. Trump’s newly created White House Faith Office, said he liked both the governor and the school superintendent, but sided with Mr. Walters on collecting citizenship data. “This is the agenda of the president who won,” said Mr. Lahmeyer, whose church has attracted members of Mr. Trump’s family and administration. “We need to know if students are U.S. citizens or if they’re not.” The governor said he did not object to enforcing immigration law but worried that undocumented parents would potentially keep their children home, rather than be forced to disclose their immigration status. “The kids didn’t do anything wrong, is my point,” he said. Mr. Stitt, a mortgage company entrepreneur who was first elected in 2018, suggested a better solution involved fixing the immigration system — an idea that hearkened back to the pre-Trump Republican Party of George W. Bush — so that companies who want to sponsor foreign workers could legally do so more easily. The Oklahoma citizenship proposal must still be considered by the Legislature before the governor has a chance to formally block it. Privately, Republicans in the Legislature have chafed at the measure, said Tyler Powell, a Republican political consultant in Oklahoma. Publicly, they have mostly avoided the fray. The leaders of the State House and Senate did not respond to requests for comment. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Powell said the rightward shift in Republican primaries in 2024 has many worried about angering Mr. Walters, who is popular with the state’s core Republican base. “Everyone has a little bit of a fear of Walters,” he said. “Behind the scenes they have ensured that Walters’s policies don’t go through, but they don’t want to come out and walk a plank with their voters.” Mr. Walters has gained attention nationally for his efforts to introduce religious and Trump-branded conservative instruction into public schools, garnering praise from religious conservatives and those strongly aligned with Mr. Trump. He has moved to purchase Bibles for public schools, create a religious charter school and to alter state curriculum to teach the “discrepancies” in the 2020 election, among other things. “My opinion is Walters needs to stop trying to gain the attention of the president and do his job,” said Mark McBride, a former Republican member of the Oklahoma State House who worked on education issues. “I hope that Governor Stitt will continue to push back on the superintendent.” Mr. Stitt stepped in to replace three members of the State Board of Education in February with new members who would be aligned with him. He said in the interview that he would soon be adding a fourth to fill an empty position, giving him a majority on the board. Kendra Wesson, an education activist, was one of the board members who voted for the citizenship proposal and was replaced by Mr. Stitt. She said the actual text of the rule — which involved the collection of aggregate data — had been misconstrued by proponents. “There’s nothing in the rule about going after kids,” she said, adding that it was about helping schools and teachers educate students who arrived speaking different languages. “I feel it is so important to get resources out to them.” Ms. Wesson said that when the governor called her to tell her he would be replacing her on the board, he offered her a seat on another board. But, she said, it came with an “ultimatum to publicly disavow Ryan Walters.” A spokeswoman for the governor said Ms. Wesson was never asked to disavow Mr. Walters. Nonetheless, she now serves on an education advisory committee — one that Mr. Walters started.

Momodou Taal, the British-Gambian Ph.D. student who faces possible deportation for his pro-Palestinian activism at Cornell, said he never envisioned becoming embroiled in an American protest movement when he arrived on campus in 2022. He had been mostly content to study, teach and work on his dissertation, a look at sovereignty and political economy in Guinea. Even so, politics ran in his family — he is the great-grandson of Gambia’s first president, Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara — and he has been interested in the Palestinian cause since he was a teenager. He studied Arabic and Sharia law in Cairo. And when war broke out in Gaza, Mr. Taal, 31, found himself increasingly drawn to the protests on Cornell’s campus, he said in a phone interview this week. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT On the day of the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, Mr. Taal posted online, “Glory to the Resistance.” Cornell suspended him twice for his activities in the year that followed. When dozens of tents went up on the campus lawn as part of an effort to get the school to divest its holdings in companies supporting the conflict, he was among the group’s leaders who refused to disband for two weeks. Later, he was suspended for participating in an unruly protest. Now, he is one of at least nine international students the Trump administration is trying to remove from the country in its promise to quell activities it calls antisemitic. But unlike some of the other students, who have been picked up by immigration agents and held in a detention facility in Louisiana, Mr. Taal has not yet been detained. Before he could be detained, he filed a pre-emptive lawsuit and he is fighting to block his detention in court. During the interview this week, he did not reveal his location. Fearing he would be taken into custody, Mr. Taal did not appear for a hearing in his court case on Tuesday. But he also said he would voluntarily surrender if the court ordered it. Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “This process is imminently hanging over me, and it has impacted every aspect of my life. I feel like a prisoner already, although all I have done is exercise my rights,” Mr. Taal wrote in court papers. A court ruling on Thursday denying a request to delay government action against Mr. Taal seemed to increase the chances of his detention or deportation, but another hearing in the case is scheduled for next week.In an executive order signed on Jan. 29, President Trump said it would be U.S. policy to use “all available and appropriate legal tools,” including to “remove” aliens who engage in “unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.” “We know there are more students at Columbia and other universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post on March 10. “We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Trump’s comment followed the first detention of such students, on March 8, when ICE agents took in Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student. Others include Yunseo Chung, a legal permanent resident who moved to the United States from South Korea when she was 7. She had participated in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia, where she is a student. A doctoral student at Tufts University, Rumeysa Ozturk, was also detained by ICE officers. She was the co-author of an essay in the Tufts student newspaper last year criticizing the university administration’s response to the war in Gaza. Officials in the Trump administration have argued in several cases that a “visa is a privilege, not a right.” Civil libertarians have called the deportation effort one of the biggest assaults on free speech in decades. Unlike Mr. Khalil, who is a permanent resident of the United States, Mr. Taal, who holds joint United Kingdom and Gambian citizenship, is here on a student visa. Lawyers for Mr. Taal have said efforts to deport him are a violation of his First Amendment rights. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Taal grew up in the United Kingdom, where his parents had emigrated, and said he spoke before British Parliament at age 15. At one point, he aspired to be Britain’s first Black prime minister. Around that time, someone gave him “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” Mr. Taal said he was inspired, “given that he was a Muslim and also Black.” He came to Cornell in 2022 to study for a Ph.D. in Africana studies. After the war broke out in Gaza, he joined a newly formed campus organization, the Cornell Coalition for Mutual Liberation. In fall 2023, the group staged demonstrations at major buildings, held a “leftist potluck” and even put on a mock trial attacking Cornell’s president at the time, Martha Pollack. Mr. Taal, whose activities were covered extensively by the campus newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, assumed the title of “intercampus liaison” for the organization and became a visible presence at rallies. In February 2024, at a demonstration outside Cornell’s Day Hall, he led chants after Cornell’s student assembly rejected a resolution to end university partnerships with companies that provided weapons to Israel. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “We are in solidarity with the armed resistance in Palestine from the river to the sea,” Mr. Taal told a crowd on campus following the vote. Some on campus saw such statements as threatening. The phrase “from the river to the sea” has been interpreted by some Jews as a genocidal call to eliminate the state of Israel. Mr. Taal has said he views it as a call for Palestinian liberation. “I know there have been times people don’t like some things I’ve said,” said Mr. Taal. But, he added, “I’ve never been violent. I’ve never been convicted of a crime. I’ve never been arrested.” Asked about his social media post on Oct. 7, he said he did not support a particular Palestinian group. “What I support is the Palestinian right to resist to colonialism, as guaranteed by international law and the principle of self determination,” he added. A pro-Zionist organization called Betar had been tracking Mr. Taal’s activities, according to court documents. The group placed him on a list of students it was circulating to members of Congress, urging that they be deported, according to Mr. Taal’s lawsuit. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In a recent post on X, Betar took credit for federal efforts to deport Mr. Taal. Eliza Salamon, a 2024 Cornell graduate who is Jewish and who was involved in the Cornell protests, said that accusations of antisemitism against Mr. Taal are unfounded. “I’ve always seen Momodou treat everyone with the utmost respect, and I think it’s truly awful that these false accusations of antisemitism are being weaponized,” she said. By April 2024, Mr. Taal’s activism had pushed Cornell’s administration to its limit. He served as the official representative for an encampment of 17 tents, occupied by 50 students, that had been erected on Cornell’s Arts Quad. In an April 26 letter, Cornell officials notified Mr. Taal that he was temporarily suspended for ignoring demands to remove the encampment, along with several other violations, including loud and disruptive behavior. Last September, Mr. Taal ran afoul of the administration once again, when a crowd of students entered the Statler Hotel on campus to protest a career fair where exhibitors included weapons manufacturers. Cornell again suspended Mr. Taal, saying he had ignored police orders and participated in “unreasonably loud” chants. Mr. Taal feared he would lose his visa. But as a petition supporting him gathered thousands of signatures, the university permitted him to remain in his Ph.D. program, as long as he continued his studies remotely. He was also no longer able to teach his class, titled “What is Blackness,” an analysis of how the conception of race varies based on geography. He would have been eligible to return to campus at the end of this semester. Cornell University has not commented on his detention. “There’s nothing in the Immigration and Nationality Act that makes someone deportable for attending a protest,” Eric T. Lee, a lawyer representing Mr. Taal, said at a court hearing in Syracuse, N.Y., on Tuesday. “What we’re asking this court to do is strike down these orders. They’re plainly unconstitutional.” Mr. Lee has said the lawsuit is a test case on the question of whether the government can jail people for their speech. For his part, Mr. Taal said he hopes to have the option of remaining in the country as he completes his dissertation. At Cornell, about 200 students held an emergency rally on March 20 as a show of support.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio estimated that he had signed perhaps more than 300 letters revoking the visas of students, visitors and others to force their expulsion from the United States because of their foreign policy views or criminal activities. He has been signing letters daily to revoke visas since taking office in late January, Mr. Rubio told reporters on Thursday night aboard an Air Force passenger jet traveling between Paramaribo, Suriname, and Miami, where he lives with his family. Mr. Rubio was concluding a three-nation tour in the Caribbean and South America. “I don’t know actually if it’s primarily student visas,” he said. “It’s a combination of visas. They’re visitors to the country. If they’re taking activities that are counter to our foreign, to our national interest, to our foreign policy, we’ll revoke the visa.” He said he reviewed each case himself before signing off on actions that would be taken by immigration agents. Mr. Rubio said that a visa holder charged with a crime while in the United States should automatically lose their visa. He is also expelling permanent U.S. residents by stripping them of their green cards. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “My standard: If we knew this information about them before we gave them a visa, would we have allowed them in?” he said. “And if the answer is no, then we revoke the visa.” Mr. Rubio declined to say how the cases arrived at his desk. “We’re not going to talk about the process by which we’re identifying it because obviously we’re looking for more people,” he said. Mr. Rubio has been the most senior aide of President Trump involved in the contentious deportation efforts in communities across the United States. In mid-March, Mr. Rubio finalized a deal in which President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador agreed to accept U.S. deportation flights with more than 200 migrants, who were put into a prison there. At least some of the migrants had fled to the United States from the repressive autocratic government of Venezuela and were not criminals, their lawyers say, but the United States failed to give them due process during their detention and deportation. Mr. Rubio has also told the Homeland Security Department to detain students or recent graduates for deportation because of what he called their opposition to American foreign policy. Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT He told reporters on Thursday at a news conference in Georgetown, Guyana, that he had revoked the student visa of a Tufts University doctorate student and Fulbright scholar from Turkey. The student, Rumeysa Ozturk, was one of several authors of a student newspaper essay last year calling for university support of Palestinian rights and divestment from Israel. After Mr. Rubio’s action, six people in black clothes and some wearing masks — presumably federal agents — seized her off a street outside her home in Somerville, Mass. Mr. Rubio has also signed off on stripping the permanent residency status of two other students who were involved in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University: Mahmoud Khalil, born in Syria, and Yunseo Chung, born in South Korea. Mr. Khalil, 30, is married to a U.S. citizen who was eight months pregnant when immigration agents seized him from their home in New York this month and took him to a detention center in Louisiana. Ms. Chung, 21, has been in the United States since age 7 with her family. Mr. Rubio has been named in separate lawsuits filed by Mr. Khalil and Ms. Chung, as well as other legal challenges to the visa and green card revocations and attempted deportations. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In Ms. Chung’s case, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to halt its efforts to deport her. Mr. Rubio has vigorously defended the actions when asked in recent days about them. He has avoided talking about details of each case but has described many of the people whose visas or green cards he has stripped as activists in movements whose participants have vandalized buildings, held disruptive rallies at universities and prevented other students from attending class. “At some point I hope we run out because we’ve gotten rid of all of them,” he said in Guyana. “But we’re looking every day for these lunatics that are tearing things up.” He added, “I encourage every country to do that, by the way, because I think it’s crazy to invite students into your country that are coming onto your campus and destabilizing it.” Critics say Mr. Trump and Mr. Rubio’s actions are similar to those taken by authoritarian governments that seek to suppress free speech and assembly. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT On Thursday, Mr. Rubio was asked twice whether under his rationale, Chinese Communist Party officials and authorities in Hong Kong had the right to deport foreign students involved in the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. As a senator from Florida, Mr. Rubio supported the protests through legislation, even though some of the protesters’ actions disrupted campuses and public life. On the plane, Mr. Rubio said, “Well, every country in the world can deny visas to whoever they want. It’s that simple. That’s a fact. Whether we like it or not, they can deny visas.”