John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight
At least 10 international students at South Dakota’s public universities have reported their visas canceled this year, according to the South Dakota Board of Regents.
Two other reported cancellations were for former students in a program that allows student visa holders to work temporarily in jobs directly related to their field of study. A visa is a document showing a foreigner’s permission to visit, work or study in the country.
Board of Regents spokeswoman Shuree Mortenson did not identify which of the state’s six public institutions the students attended. A Dakota State University spokeswoman told South Dakota Searchlight, however, that no visa cancellations have been reported by any of the Madison school’s 198 international students.
The public has been privy to the details in just one of the cases, that of Indian doctoral candidate Priya Saxena. She sued Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem to prevent any action that would block Saxena from collecting her Ph.D. in chemical and biological engineering on May 10 from South Dakota Mines.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier ordered DHS to reinstate Saxena’s student status and leave her be, at least until the judge makes a call on whether to issue a further-reaching preliminary injunction in the case.
On the day Saxena would collect her degree at Mines, Noem will deliver the commencement speech at DSU. A news release from the school, sent Wednesday morning, notes that Noem was extended the invitation to speak while she was still governor of South Dakota, a position she vacated to lead DHS.
Saxena’s plight was one of the motivations for about 25 people who demonstrated Wednesday outside City Hall in Rapid City, as part of a protest led by Indivisible Rapid City to “call attention to the increasing disregard for basic constitutional protections — especially the right to due process, which applies to all people, not just U.S. citizens.”
Demonstrator Pat Braun held a sign referencing student visa holders and said she is upset that Saxena was targeted.
“It’s so ill-informed, so mean-spirited, so ugly,” Braun said.
South Dakota part of nationwide crackdown
The cancellations in South Dakota are among a crush of visa-policing actions taken by the Trump administration as part of a wider push to tighten immigration enforcement, including an uptick in arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants.
The president issued two executive orders impacting student visas on Jan. 20. One directed DHS and the U.S. State Department to review and revoke the visas of international students engaged in what the order called “anti-Semetic” behavior. The order swept up students critical of Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas, including a Turkish woman attending Tufts University who penned a pro-Palestine opinion column, and whose apprehension by agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement was captured on a widely shared video.
The other executive order directs federal agencies to review visa programs more broadly, and instructs DHS Secretary Noem to “take immediate steps to exclude or remove” anyone in the U.S. who might be considered a threat to public safety.
Issues with visas or legal status have since befallen more than 1,000 students nationwide, The Associated Press reported last week. The wire service compiled the figure using statements from schools and state officials. Another outlet, Inside Higher Education, puts the figure at 1,700.
Several students or groups of students have sued the administration over the visa actions. On the same day Saxena was given a reprieve in her South Dakota case, a federal judge in Georgia signed a similar order meant to temporarily reinstate the student status of 133 international students.
South Dakota students
South Dakota Searchlight reached out to the Board of Regents and representatives of the state’s six public universities to inquire about visa status changes. The most recent report from the regents lists 2,233 international students in the state.
Northern State University and the University of South Dakota did not respond. The schools that did, aside from DSU in Madison, said in statements that their respective international student offices are offering visa guidance to students as needed.
In her statement on behalf of the regents, Mortenson said that “our universities are not directly involved in this process.”
“However, with less than three weeks remaining in the spring semester, we will assist affected students with their academic efforts to the best of our ability,” she wrote.
Searchlight also reached out to Augustana University, the state’s largest private four-year school, whose spokesperson said its international students had not been affected.
Federal information limited
In separate statements to South Dakota Searchlight, the DHS and State Department declined to say how many foreign students in South Dakota have had visas revoked.
The State Department issues visas for international students. It revokes visas “every day,” its statement read, and “will continue to do so.”
“When considering revocations, the department looks at information that arises after the visa was issued that may indicate a potential visa ineligibility under U.S. immigration laws, pose a threat to public safety, or other situations where revocation is warranted,” the statement read. “This can include everything from arrests, criminal convictions, and engaging in conduct that is inconsistent with the visa classification, to an overstay.”
DHS doesn’t issue visas, but is involved on the enforcement and monitoring side. It maintains the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a database created after the 9/11 attacks and used to validate an international student’s ability to study in the U.S.
Schools must re-register international students through SEVIS each semester to verify that they’re fulfilling visa requirements. Schools can terminate the SEVIS record if a student violates their visa terms by, for example, not enrolling in a full course of study.
An international student with a visa needs a SEVIS record set to “active” status to attend school.
The recent SEVIS record terminations have come by way of Noem’s federal agency, not from schools.
A DHS spokesperson wrote that it “conducts regular reviews” of SEVIS records “to ensure visa holders remain in compliance with program requirements.”
If an issue is flagged, including “criminal arrests and other national security concerns,” the statement says, DHS may notify the State Department, which may revoke a student’s visa. “Individuals who remain in the U.S. without lawful immigration status may be subject to arrest and removal,” the statement reads. “For such individuals, the safest and most efficient option is self-deportation.”
Mines student targeted over Sturgis rally traffic violation
The revocation for Saxena, the doctoral candidate at South Dakota Mines, came after a “criminal records check,” according to documents filed in her lawsuit against Noem and the DHS.
Saxena learned of the revocation through the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi on April 7, six days after she defended her doctoral thesis, according to documents filed with her lawsuit.
Conviction for a “crime of moral turpitude,” a category that includes offenses like driving under the influence, can be grounds for visa revocation.
Saxena has been in the U.S. since 2020. Her only criminal conviction came in 2021, for the class two misdemeanor of failure to move over for flashing yellow lights. She was ticketed for driving under the influence during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, but the charge didn’t hold up.
A blood test put her blood alcohol content on the evening of the stop at 0.06, which is below South Dakota’s 0.08 legal threshold for intoxication. Prosecutors dismissed the DUI charge.
Judge Schreier heard details about the incident during a Friday hearing on Saxena’s request for an emergency temporary restraining order.
Later that day, the judge ordered DHS to “set aside” its decision to mark Saxena’s visa status as terminated, to return her SEVIS record to “active” status and to refrain from taking any enforcement action against her until May 2, or until “further order from the court.”
The doctoral candidate faced “irreparable harm” if DHS moved forward, Schreier wrote.
Saxena’s lawyer, Jim Leach of Rapid City, decried the federal government’s actions against international students as “government gone wild.”
Saxena has authored or co-authored a dozen peer-reviewed papers in her field, a point Leach added to the initial complaint in her lawsuit. That’s the kind of person South Dakota and the U.S. ought to treasure, Leach said, not toss out for a traffic violation.
“The great things we have in this country are built on knowledge, on information,” Leach said. “They’re built by smart people like her, who can do the Ph.D. stuff in chemical and biological engineering that I never could have done.”