Universities scramble to help international students across Minnesota after visas revoked

Universities across Minnesota are scrambling to help international students after more students had their visas revoked, schools reported Thursday, just a day after five international students in Mankato had their student visas terminated.

At Minnesota State, an international student at Ridgewater College, a two-year college with campuses in Hutchinson and Willmar, had their visa revoked recently.

In central Minnesota at St. Cloud State University, a “handful” of international students had their records terminated within the Student Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the university said they were working directly with affected students to support them.

An international student enrolled at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul also had their record in the system terminated, but it wasn’t clear if their visa was also revoked. In all of these cases, spokespeople for the institutions wouldn’t specify when or why.

And across the University of Minnesota’s five campuses, at least two additional students had their visas revoked, a source with knowledge of the situation said late Thursday.

The move comes after a wave of high-profile arrests of international students. Last week, a yet-unnamed Mankato international student was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and a Turkish University of Minnesota graduate student, Doğukan Günaydın, was arrested over a previous drunken-driving conviction.

At Minnesota State University, Mankato, President Edward Inch announced Wednesday that neither the university nor the students who had their records terminated from SEVIS were notified about it, and only found out after the university “ran a status check.”

The five students whose visas were revoked will have to return to their home countries within 60 days, Inch said Wednesday. One of the students who lost their visa was close to completing their studies, Inch said at the student assembly on Wednesday. “We’re going to do our best to ensure the students are able to complete their classes,” he said.

At Metro State, the school has 175 international students on F-1 visas, while Ridgewater has seven. St. Cloud State has more than 1,700 international students, according to Open Doors’ 2024 data.

Ridgewater “will work with each student individually to help them find the support they need,” said Kelly Magnuson, vice president of enrollment at Ridgewater, in a statement.

In a Thursday night statement, the University of Minnesota said it remained fully committed to supporting students affected by immigration policies.

“Our leaders are closely tracking any potential changes to federal policies, laws, and other requirements,” the school said.

An internal email sent by the U said the university was providing “personal support” related to visa processing and international travel to the affected international students and offered the U’s Student Legal Services as a resource for concerned students. Mental health support is also available, the email said.

Many other Minnesota colleges and universities contacted by the Minnesota Star Tribune on Thursday did not respond to inquiries about whether they had students with revoked visas, but about a dozen institutions across the state — including Macalester College, Winona State University, the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University — said they checked their systems and had no new visa revocations.

Other institutions, like St. Paul College, didn’t say whether there were additional revocations but said they were monitoring the situation and offering their international students support.

Twin Cities immigration attorney David Wilson said he’s representing other international students who have had their visas revoked, some of which occurred several days ago, but institutions and students weren’t aware of the changes right away, he said.

“I think [colleges and universities] are just now paying attention to these things,” he said. “The underlying condition, the SEVIS terminations ... is probably being done on a wider scale than we initially appreciated.”

The students’ records are held within SEVIS, an electronic monitoring program created in response to 9/11 to communicate when international college students stop attending school, he said. Colleges receive access to the system from ICE. Students do not have access themselves.

He said he’s being “inundated with requests for help” because international students are “freaking out,” sometimes worrying about infractions as small as a parking ticket, he said.

It’s hard to counsel them because this has never happened in this way before and the government may not have the authority to do this, he said. No one knows what is triggering revocations and there’s been no advance notice this was going to occur.

The federal government is supposed to give notice of such things and then people are supposed to get a chance to respond, he said.

“Students aren’t being told this; they’re finding out from their school,” Wilson said. “This isn’t how we expect orderly government to work.”