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Blumenthal: Visa revocations have been "horrific."
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal marked Thursday’s “day of action” for higher education by sending a letter to senior Trump administration officials demanding information about at least 53 international students across Connecticut who have had their visas revoked.
Blumenthal, Mayor Justin Elicker and 20 orange-clad members of Local 33, Yale’s graduate student union, also gathered on the second floor of City Hall to decry those visa revocations, which the senator described as an “attack on higher education.”
“We’ve watched, in horror, over these last weeks, as international students with valid visas have seen those visas revoked,” Blumenthal said at Thursday morning’s press conference. “We’ve watched the revocation of those student visas, arbitrarily, capriciously, without any apparent due process or rhyme or reason. These visas have just been revoked on the say-so of officials in Washington.”
In the letter, which is addressed to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons, Blumenthal requested the total number of visas revoked by the administration, as well as the forms of notice and due process students received to challenge the revocations. Blumenthal requested a response by April 25. Click here to read the full letter.
The visas of at least 13 international students at the University of Connecticut have been revoked, along with at least 40 from the member schools of the Connecticut Conference of Independent Colleges, which represents 14 private colleges and universities.
Rubio has defended the visa revocations as necessary to clamp down on what he described as “lunatics” disrupting campuses with pro-Palestinian activism. In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order promising to “quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses.”
It is not clear if any of the students with visas revoked in Connecticut were involved in pro-Palestinian campus activism.
At the Thursday morning presser, Blumenthal argued that the worsening academic climate for international students, particularly graduate researchers, hurts the state’s economy, which is disproportionately dependent on educated researchers.
“We don’t have gold mines, we don’t have oil wells, we don’t have the Grand Canyon,” Blumenthal said. “What we have is really smart people who work hard and study and then graduate and stay here and produce research as well as economic benefits. Our great resource is human talent.”
The event’s other speakers presented dire visions of Trump’s governance. Elicker lambasted Trump in a fiery speech, saying his administration is causing “America’s great decline.” Arita Acharya, a Yale graduate researcher in genetics and Local 33’s Secretary-Treasurer, added that the administration’s targeting of immigrants and international students is “catastrophic for our nation’s standing on the global stage.”
Despite this, Blumenthal seemed optimistic that he would be able to find bipartisan support in the Senate to oppose the visa revocations, saying he thinks Republican senators are “increasingly dismayed” by the Trump administration and fearful of the political cost of supporting him. So far, Republican senators have largely backed Trump’s crackdown on international students.
Grad union leader Acharya: "I am the daughter of immigrants who came here decades ago to study and perform research."