Immigration detentions of international students expand beyond protesters

Legal questions and controversy are growing about immigration enforcement against international students after ICE’s arrest of Turkish MBA student Doğukan Günaydin at the University of Minnesota last week.

The Department of Homeland Security told the Associated Press that the arrest followed the revocation of the student’s visa because of a past drunken driving offense and is not related to campus activism.

Drunken driving arrests are a common way for unlawful immigrants to come to the attention of U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), and the agency has prioritized such cases in recent months amid President Donald Trump’s push for mass deportations. But until now, different policies have applied to foreigners on student visas.

“As long as you’re going to school full-time, paying your tuition, and not violating your status by working without authorization, there’s no reason for [ICE] to say they’re pulling you out of school,” said attorney David Wilson, who has represented other student visa holders but is not connected to this latest case. “This is an expansion that has not been recognized in the law.”

He added: “If they were convicted of certain theft offenses, felonies … drug offenses, those categories of crimes remain fair game. A DWI is not on the books right now that way.”

Wilson noted that the State Department implemented a policy nearly a decade ago to cancel international students’ visas following a drunken driving arrest; if they left the country and wanted to return, they would have to apply for a new visa and undergo a medical exam to assess whether they had addiction problems. But those students were permitted to continue their college education, according to Wilson. He said the department stopped the practice of revoking visas for DWIs about a year later.

While a student visa can be revoked, “there’s nothing saying ICE has the authority to pick someone up because of this,” said Wilson. Taking someone out of school and putting the student in jail “is a whole new world, and there’s no authority for that that’s been established.”

In the early hours of a Saturday in June 2023, a Minneapolis police officer noticed Günaydin’s Volkswagen Jetta nearly hit a stop light, jump a curb and weave in and out of traffic.

Court records show the officer said Günaydin did not immediately stop after he activated his squad lights to pull him over; when Günaydin stopped and the officer began to step out of his car, he drove away. After the officer called for assistance and Günaydin finally stopped, police took him to a chemical testing facility where they found his blood-alcohol concentration was more than twice the legal limit.

An attorney for Günaydin argued in court filings that police made his client exit his vehicle while pointing loaded guns at him and failed to read him his Miranda rights.

In March 2024, Günaydin pleaded guilty to drunken driving.

After being taken into custody over the weekend, he is now being held in the Sherburne County jail, one of three county detention centers contracted by ICE to house immigrant detainees in Minnesota. Günaydin, 28, has filed a federal lawsuit challenging his arrest.

“Mr. Günaydin has committed no crime that is cause for termination of his Student Status or that renders him deportable,” his petition asserts, going on to say that neither he nor his counsel has been provided with any documentation or even indication of national security or foreign policy-related charges.

“Doğukan feared he was being kidnapped as a man in a hooded sweatshirt grabbed him and handcuffed him,” the lawsuit reads. “He was placed into an unmarked vehicle and transported to a holding cell.”

Neither Günaydin’s attorney nor the Department of Homeland Security has responded to messages seeking more information.

Universities are required to enter information about international students into a national database, allowing the federal government to track whether they are still enrolled.

Günaydin came to Minnesota from Istanbul to study at St. Olaf College, where he double majored in economics and computer science. A YouTube video shows he gave a TEDx Talk as a high school student in 2016. At the time, he was enrolled at United World College in Maastricht, Netherlands.

During his talk, Günaydin discussed how he viewed his early schooling as being like a superstar athlete, defining his own success solely by good grades.

“I tried to define myself with my grades. I ignored my weaknesses; I ignored my failures,” he says in the YouTube video. He told the story of how he re-evaluated his approach to life following a difficult time when school administrators in Turkey informed him that his mother had died of cancer.

His LinkedIn profile states that he’s a motivated and analytical professional seeking opportunities to collaborate and solve complex business problems and that he’s set to graduate from his MBA program in May 2026.

Günaydin received a six-month sentence for drunken driving at a county correctional facility; the sentence was stayed for two years. The last point of his plea agreement stated, “I understand that if I am not a citizen of the United States, my plea of guilty may result in deportation, exclusion from admission to the United States, or denial of naturalization as a United States citizen.”

About 40 professors, students and other U community members gathered for a peaceful protest outside Morrill Hall on Tuesday to demand action from officials to prevent ICE detentions.

“It’s to let them know, ‘We’re paying attention, and we want to see leadership from you and for you to show the courage necessary to stand up for our community,’ ” said David Fox, a professor of earth and environmental sciences who organized the protest in a personal capacity.

At Minnesota State University, Mankato, news of another international student detained last Friday at an off-campus residence has “terrified” others in that group, said Jameel Haque, director of the Kessel Peace Institute and professor in the Department of History.

Students are organizing and planning a protest next Wednesday on campus, Haque said.

But international students are not likely to be there. They’re being advised to delete their social media accounts and not engage in protests, Haque said. Professors, advisers and some embassies are telling international students to “keep your head down,” he said.

Lawyers from across the state are working on providing the student with representation, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota said Tuesday. “He’s going to be represented, and he’s going to be represented well,” said Ben Casper, staff attorney for the ACLU of Minnesota, which plans to assist once representation is secured.

The recent detentions of international students in Minnesota have one thing in common, Casper said: “They’re all from Muslim countries.” He declined to provide more information about the Mankato student.

The college declined to provide the student’s name, citing privacy laws. Haque said he has not been directly involved with the student or his family but that the student has not been involved in recent on-campus protests.

“When our constitutional rights are violated like this, people being arrested without charges, people who are here legally and with full constitutional rights being arrested without charges, it’s very troubling, and it sounds an awful lot like kidnapping,” Haque said.

Five other students at Minnesota State University, Mankato have had their visas terminated, said university president Edward Inch during a student government assembly on Wednesday, according to a university spokesman and sources at the meeting.

Paul Walsh of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.