What does it mean when students and faculty disappear?
When the very institutions charged with cultivating the next generation of global leaders—our colleges and universities—become sites of surveillance and exile, we are witnessing not only an educational crisis, but a moral one. Over the past few weeks, reports have surfaced from Harvard, the University of Washington, Columbia, Tufts, and dozens of other institutions nationwide: international students and recent graduates, many on valid visas or even holding green cards, are being detained and deported without due process or warning.
Their so-called offense? Peacefully protesting in support of Palestinian human rights. Or in some cases, doing nothing at all.
From Ivy Walls to ICE Facilities
We are watching the U.S. government weaponize immigration policy in a way that mirrors some of history’s darkest tactics. Like Mahmoud Khalil—a permanent resident and Columbia University graduate student—ripped from his home and transported to an ICE detention facility in rural Louisiana. Or Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts, arrested without a warrant while walking home after iftar. Or Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown scholar reportedly targeted not for any illegal act, but for the heritage and speech of his Palestinian-American wife.
More than 300 students and recent graduates have now had their visas revoked. Some are already detained. Others have vanished into what civil rights advocates are calling “ICE black boxes”—remote, for-profit detention centers far from legal aid, family, or media scrutiny. And this isn’t conjecture. These detentions are real, deliberate, and now patterned. It’s a modern iteration of a police state using deportation as a disciplinary tool.
A Historical Echo: The Gestapo and the Politics of Fear
Let’s not mince words. What we are witnessing echoes the origins of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany. The Gestapo, or Geheime Staatspolizei, didn’t begin as death camp operators—it began by identifying, detaining, and disappearing dissenters. They specialized in exploiting legal loopholes to suppress political opposition. They claimed their removals were “for national security.” They often acted without court oversight. Sound familiar?
The parallels are chilling. Just as the Gestapo used state bureaucracy to erase political dissidents, the Trump administration has used immigration bureaucracy to silence international students who dare to exercise their rights. When legal residents and student visa holders are detained for speech, associations, or minor infractions, we are not protecting national security. We are destroying it.
Campus Speech Under Siege
This is more than a tragedy for the individuals detained. It’s an assault on the Constitution and First Amendment. What we are witnessing is not immigration enforcement—it is political retaliation cloaked in national security language. Student speech is not just being chilled—it is being criminalized.
Harvard, the UC system, and others are scrambling to respond. But institutions must do more than react. They must protect. They must litigate. They must speak with one voice to condemn this targeted erosion of academic freedom and international inclusion.
When universities are engaged in “nuetrality”, fall silent, or offer only half-hearted statements of concern, they become complicit in the repression. These students and faculty are not strangers. They are our classmates, our teaching assistants, our future scholars our colleagues. To abandon them now is to betray the very values universities claim to uphold.
The Disappearance of Rights is the Disappearance of Democracy
Let’s be clear: these students and faculty are not illegal. Many are here on valid F-1 visas, J-1 research appointments, or are permanent residents with green cards. Their forced removal without due process is an egregious violation of constitutional protections and human rights. If the United States can revoke faculty or student status based on political beliefs, it is no longer the land of the free—it is a nation governed by fear.
These actions are not occurring in a vacuum. They are part of a broader, coordinated assault on civil liberties, DEI initiatives, and public education. From efforts to ban critical race theory to book bans to the dismantling of ethnic studies programs, we are seeing a systematic rollback of liberty that took generations to build.
Who Gets to Belong in the U.S. Academy?
The question at the heart of this crackdown is chillingly simple: Who gets to belong?
When international students and faculty are rounded up and disappeared for acts of protest or free expression, it tells us that belonging is conditional. That academic freedom is negotiable. That citizenship is no longer the only shield against state power. When permanent residents like Mahmoud Khalil are detained for speech, what message does that send to every other immigrant, scholar, or activist in the United States?
Belonging should not be contingent on silence. Or obedience. Or political neutrality. Universities should be the safest places in the country to debate, dissent, and dream of a better world. Instead, they are becoming sites of fear—where administrators warn students to watch what they say, and where unmarked white ICE vans without government plates wait just beyond the quad.
What We Can Learn from History
History doesn’t repeat itself. But it rhymes. And the rhyme we’re hearing now echoes not only the Gestapo, but McCarthyism, Japanese internment, and an orwellian 1984 surveillance state. The mechanisms differ. The rhetoric evolves. But the underlying impulse remains the same: to punish those who challenge power.
It’s easy to think it can’t happen in the United States. But it is happening. Right now. And not just to undocumented immigrants. But to legal residents. Visa holders. Scholars. Students. People who have followed every rule, filled out every form, paid every fee—only to be disappeared for a tweet, a poster, or a protest.
Resistance Requires More Than Regret
The time for outrage is now. But outrage alone is not enough. Universities must offer legal support, financial aid, and continued academic access to targeted students. Faculty and staff must demand stronger protections for international scholars. Alumni must speak out. Trustees must act.
And policymakers must be held accountable. Silence is not “neutrality”, it is endorsement. Every revoked visa is a referendum on our values. Every deportation of an innocent human is a line crossed.
This is a test. Not just of policy, but of principle. Of whether we will allow fear to triumph over freedom. Of whether we believe that education is a right for all, not a privilege for the silent.
A Call to the Academy
To my colleagues in higher education: this is not someone else’s fight. This is our moment of reckoning. Will we stand for the international students and faculty who make our campuses vibrant, brilliant, and just? Will we remember that the academy’s purpose is not only to transmit knowledge, but to defend truth?
We cannot build global classrooms if students must fear global retaliation. We cannot foster critical thinking if the cost of a question is deportation. We cannot protect democracy abroad if we do not practice it at home.
This is not just about student visas. It’s about the soul of the university.
It’s about your soul.
Because when students and faculty disappear, it’s not just a visa that vanishes.
It’s our values.