To no one’s surprise, Donald Trump’s immigration policies are off to a chaotic start before he even takes office.
The uncertainty is palpable, especially for international students who have been told by faculty to stay on campus during holiday break and summer breaks due to Trump’s travel ban that will be enacted once he’s inaugurated.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Chinese officials are also telling Chinese students in the United States not to leave the country for the holidays or during the following school year.
This follows calls from numerous U.S. universities advising international students to return to campus before Trump’s second term begins on Jan. 20, 2025.
“A travel ban is likely to go into effect soon after inauguration,” Cornell University Office of Global Learning advised students. “The ban is likely to include citizens of the countries targeted in the first Trump administration: Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Myanmar, Sudan, Tanzania, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and Somalia. New countries could be added to this list, particularly China and India.”
With Trump repeatedly promising a full-scale immigration overhaul and mass deportations on “day one,” the fear is that students—regardless of their country of origin—could be swept up in the crackdown.
Adding to the anxiety among students and faculty, Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan reiterated that he has no problem reinstating Trump’s first administration’s “zero tolerance” child separation policy. This cruel and chaotic immigration policy separated families from their children while keeping them locked in prison-like detention centers.
Meanwhile, Trump ally and Department of Government Efficiency co-chair appointee Elon Musk is publicly feuding with the MAGA coalition over immigration, revealing tensions among rightwing leadership.
The dispute started when conservative activist Laura Loomer criticized Trump’s decision to appoint Sriram Krishnan as AI adviser, citing his support for removing green card per-country caps for skilled immigrants. Loomer, known for promoting racist views, argued that foreign workers—particularly in STEM—were taking jobs from Americans.
Musk responded by saying that the United States lacks talented engineers, so he supports providing more visas to skilled workers.
On one side, the anti-immigrant, pro-nationalist MAGA faction with figures like Loomer is railing against immigrant workers. On the other, there are self-interested billionaire tech executives like Musk who see a need for more immigration to fuel innovation.
Back on campus, the University of California Los Angeles Center for Immigration Law and Policy sent a message to students the day after the election results, reminding them that the school “will not release immigration status or related information in confidential student records … without a judicial warrant, a subpoena, a court order, or as otherwise required by law.”
“We’re very uncertain about the future,” said Brazilian New York University international student Gabrielle Balreira Fontenelle Mota in an interview with CNN.
As Trump’s second term looms, it’s clear that his administration's immigration policies will only get messier. Between the confusion over what he’ll implement and who he’ll target, the public pushback from within his own ranks, and the growing anxiety among college students, a rough road is shaping up ahead.
