On Monday evening, Rhode Island School of Design President Crystal Williams told the RISD community that one international student’s visa was revoked.
Williams, writing in an all-campus email, did not disclose the name of the student and said the school had “not been told the reason for the terminated status.”
This follows a wave of similar revocations at higher education institutions across the country, including Columbia, Harvard and Stanford. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on March 27 that the department had revoked about 300 student visas.
International students make up 33% of RISD undergraduates enrolled this academic year, according to the college’s website.
“Amid the current landscape of rapidly changing immigration policies, RISD’s Office of International Students and Scholar Affairs routinely reviews the internal and government records of our international students,” Williams wrote in the email. “Unfortunately, today we learned of one student whose international status was marked ‘terminated,’ a formal designation that reflects the revocation of a student’s visa status in the U.S.”
“Such a revocation of one’s student status is rare, personally and professionally impactful, and especially heartbreaking,” Williams wrote.
In March, the Assistant Professor of Medicine Rasha Alawieh — who held a valid H-1B visa — was deported to Lebanon, despite a federal judge’s order, The Herald previously reported. The deportation came after U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents found “sympathetic photos and videos” of Hezbollah figures on Alawieh’s cell phone, according to the Department of Justice.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security also recently detained Rümeysa Öztürk, a graduate student at Tufts University who signed onto an op-ed published in the Tufts Daily last year regarding divestment efforts on campus.
In her email, Williams wrote that ISSA contacted the student directly to possibly aid in finding legal resources and “to the extent possible, support the student throughout this difficult moment.”
“All of the information we have to share can be found in President Williams’s communication to the RISD community,” RISD Spokesperson Jaime Marland wrote in an email to The Herald.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Sanai Rashid lives in Long Island, New York. As an English and Economics concentrator, she is passionate about storytelling and how numbers and data create narratives in ways words alone cannot. When she is not writing, you can find her trying new pizza places in Providence or buying another whale stuffed animal.
