Afrikaners over Afghan refugees, foreign-student witch hunts and more
Does Trump, who rails against DEI and 'preferential treatment,' even care about the appearance of bias in those he purges, panders to?
On Monday, the same day President Trump welcomed in 59 Afrikaners from South Africa as refugees, he officially cancelled temporary refugee status to 14,000 Afghans. He has also shut down refugee admissions to Sudanese people escaping genocide, yet makes room for Europeans whose forerunners subjected South Africa to Apartheid. In an executive order in February, he claimed they’re the ones facing discrimination.
He doesn’t seem to even care about the appearance of race-based preferential treatment in his actions.
Bringing in the Afrikaners comes on the heels of Trump’s multiple attempts - many successful - to expel foreign-born people of color without cause. And that has gone way beyond his 100th day in office boast of sealing the southern border and deporting undocumented “criminals.”
Well before Day 100, it was becoming clear Trump’s targets weren’t just people who committed crimes. They include students with Green Cards, exercising their first amendment rights to protest; students on temporary visas who didn’t protest, and refugees and migrants who broke no other laws. Hundreds of Venezuelans dubbed gangsters based solely on their tattoos have been dispatched under Trump’s rule to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
Such moves have been carried out without due process and with flagrant disdain for people’s humanity, wellbeing, and rights. Now, thanks to some 65 lawsuits filed by students around the country, including one from four University of Iowa students, we’re learning of the witch hunts the administration engaged in.
In March, the Department of Homeland Security typed nearly 1.3 million names of international students in America into the National Crime Information Center database. After 734 names were flagged - including some merely suspected of a crime or arrested but never charged, or who went missing - they were forwarded to a Homeland Security official. Within 24 hours, that official ordered the termination of students’ records under the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS). Those are files kept by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to ensure students are complying with their visas – maintaining full course loads, not being employed without authorization and not being convicted of violent crimes or others that carry more than one-year sentences.
The process last month led to some 4,700 students having their visas cancelled or SEVIS records removed without explanation or warning. More than 1,800 students lost their F-1 or J-1 student status after officials failed to verify the information that turned up.
Two of the four UI students who sued are Indian and two are Chinese. As their lawsuit describes, on April 10 all were informed that their SEVIS records had been terminated. The government didn’t even bother to tell them; that fell to the university’s international students’ office. Four days later, each got warnings from U.S. embassies that “Remaining in the United States can result in fines, detention, and/or deportation.’ ”
And like some of the detainees sent to El Salvador, the affected students were informed that if they didn’t leave of their own accord, they might be sent to countries other than their homelands. These are young people typically apart from their parents for the first time, and at such a distance. And that’s to say nothing of the impact on their college credits, tuition expenditures and more.
These are such preposterous violations of longstanding international norms and basic humanity that it’s hard to even wrap one’s head around them.
The UI students’ suit claims that none of the four met the criteria noted for loss of SEVIS status. Several had DUI charges which didn’t carry sentences of more than a year, and had received deferred judgments, satisfied probation and had them expunged. But by terminating their SEVIS records, it alleged, DHS had created a pretext for future adverse and unlawful immigration actions against them.
The suit names the DHS, its Secretary Kristi Noem and Todd Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It claims the government’s actions “were not supported by statute or regulation.” And it accuses DHS of engaging “in a nationwide action to terminate student status unlawfully, trying to coerce Plaintiffs, along with hundreds of other students across the country, into 'self-deporting.'
“Plaintiffs are now experiencing intense mental and financial suffering because they cannot continue with their studies,” it said, “and fear being detained and removed if they do so.”
A few days after their suit was filed, U.S. Southern District Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the Trump administration from arresting, detaining, or transferring the students or terminating their status “absent a valid ground” without letting them review and respond to the claims.
The DHS announced the following day that it had paused deactivating student files and would temporarily restore them.
But in the last week of April, new guidelines were announced expanding ICE's authority. Immigration lawyers say those will give immigration officials the “inherent authority” to terminate students’ legal residency status, and include new justifications not subject to court challenges.
One immigration attorney, Brad Banias, represented an Indian-born computer science student in Texas named Akshar Patel. He sued the Trump administration after his SEVIS record was terminated over a 2018 speeding stop and citation for reckless driving that didn’t even result in a formal charge. Patel’s status was later reinstated.
“This just gave them carte blanche to have the State Department revoke a visa and then deport those students even if they’ve done nothing wrong,” Banias told media of the new guidelines.
Until now, it has repeatedly fallen to the courts to bring at least temporary halts to such extreme- and likely unconstitutional - orders. Even then, the administration may lurch, pause, resume or reverse course with no acknowledgment of fault. In some cases, like that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was improperly deported to El Salvador, the administration simply ignored the U.S. Supreme Court order to facilitate his return.
But with the new ICE guidelines, judicial orders will be harder to enforce.
It’s getting harder to ignore some glaring truths underlying this Administration’s war on certain people, namely the racial and ethnic characteristics or financial means of those Trump is favoring or repelling. Note the nationalities of the foreign students and other targets mentioned in this piece: Indian. Indian. Indian. Chinese. Chinese. Venezuelan. Salvadoran. But he’s fast-tracking 'Gold Card' visas on a trial basis, to prioritize immigrants who can cough up $5 million.
This isn’t some alternative Replacement Theory; it’s demonstrated practice. And if Americans don’t stand up to it loudly and clearly, we can forget our claims to liberty, equality and justice for all.
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Granting 59 white South Africans entry into the United States, while revoking the immigration Visas for 14,000 Afghan refugees, reveals the deeply racist agenda of Trump and his administration. Silence from our Republican representatives in Congress, Grassley, Ernst, Nunn, Hinson, Miller-Meeks, and Feenstra speaks volumes.
Many of the Afghan refugees served alongside our military in Afghanistan w the promise we'd take care of them afterwards. Another slap in the face to military veterans.