A string of executive actions from the Trump administration have raised concerns about immigration status, student visas and free speech on campus. University officials say NC State will continue to monitor the changes and adhere to federal law.
Immigration enforcement on college campuses
President Donald Trump initiated sweeping changes to immigration upon his inauguration to his second term in office. Among these was a Homeland Security directive ending the restrictions on immigration enforcement in so-called “sensitive locations” like schools and churches, raising questions of law enforcement’s authority on university campuses.
In January, UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Lee Roberts said the university would comply with all requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Immigration lawyer Pooyan Ordoubadi, who defended UNC students charged in the pro-Palestinian encampments last spring, said universities are not usually legally obligated to comply with ICE warrants; a position the ACLU affirmed in a letter to UNC last week.
“If ICE comes to them and asks for student records and disciplinary records and things like that, I assume most schools would not provide it,” Ordoubadi said. “There’s no institution that’s required to work with ICE unless ICE has a judicial warrant.”
ICE delivers its own kinds of ‘administrative’ warrants that do not legally require compliance or give agents any authority. Ordoubadi said he rarely sees ICE have judicial warrants, which are orders signed by judges legally authorizing agent actions. If universities voluntarily supply student information, he anticipates they will be met with lawsuits.
NC State issued guidance regarding potential immigration enforcement and information requests for campus personnel last week. The guidance reaffirms the University’s adherence to federal laws like FERPA and the corresponding requirement of “a valid court order or subpoena to release certain information.”
Admission and student visas
Executive Order 14161, entitled “Protecting the United States From Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats,” lays the groundwork for changes to the deportation and admission of immigrants.
“The United States must ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security,” the order states.
Ordoubadi likened the order to the first Trump administration’s “Muslim ban” but with wording more likely to hold up in court. Generally, the administration has control over the admissions component of immigration and can temporarily suspend admissions from certain countries.
Sarah Ludington, director of the First Amendment Clinic at the Duke University School of Law, referred to the 1972 Supreme Court decision Kleindienst v. Mandel as precedent for upholding the order.
“Although it may seem really distasteful that the United States is doing a sort of clearly viewpoint-based vetting of who’s allowed to enter the country, it is under current Supreme Court law and statutory law — as far as I know — allowed,” Ludington said.
Deporting migrants already in the country who may harbor certain opinions is another case. Constitutional rights like freedom of speech and due process still apply to non-citizens, Ordoubadi said, so immediate deportation based on speech would likely fail in court.
The concern facing international students at universities is their student visas.
“The way that’s going to affect students is that a lot of people have to renew their student visas,” Ordoubadi said. “So if there’s anything kind of troubling in their record, they can just choose not to renew them. And then once they overstay, then that makes them deportable.”
First Amendment concerns
Another executive order points to what the Trump administration might consider ‘troubling’. Executive Order 14188, titled “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism,” specifically points to crackdowns on college campuses. According to a fact sheet distributed by the White House, the order promises to cancel the visas of ‘Hamas sympathizers’ on campuses and directly refers to those who participated in Palestinian protests.
“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” the fact sheet states.
Ludington said, especially in the context of the Trump administration already attempting to undermine the 14th Amendment in ending birthright citizenship, the speech rights of international students might not be as black and white as before.
“It is a really complicated and difficult question to say whether students who are here on student visas have identical First Amendment rights to every other student,” Ludington said.
Ludington said the executive actions appear to have substantial legal merit and will be tested in court sooner rather than later.
“I’m really, really concerned about this kind of order expanding beyond this kind of speech,” Ludington said. “In the free speech area, one of the mottos is we have to be ever vigilant against government intrusions on freedom of speech and freedom of thought, because this is probably a test case that, if they win, will embolden the administration to go after other unpopular ideas.”
Trump has referred to the December 2024 House of Representatives “Staff Report on Antisemitism” in relation to Order 14188, which posits institutions of higher education across the country “failed to stop antisemitism on their campuses, likely violating Title VI.” NC State revised its anti-discrimination policy after settling an antisemitism Title VI complaint in October of last year.
The order directs universities to monitor and report activities by aliens that may violate a federal code, which, among other things, extensively defines “terrorist activities” and what ‘participating’ in them might entail. Judicial precedent has defined how the government can prevent material support for terrorist organizations, but Ludington suggests Trump could take it a step further.
“It’s going to be really interesting to read and see how the administration wants to push that line,” Ludington said. “But they probably do want to expand the definition of material support for foreign terrorist organizations into areas that I would consider pure speech, pure political speech.”
Ordoubadi maintained that revoking visas or deporting someone based on political speech would be problematic and unlikely to survive a legal challenge.
In response to the executive actions, University spokesperson Mick Kulikowski told Technician “NC State complies with all federal laws and is monitoring the new directives.”
Elizabeth James, director of the Office of International Services, said in a written statement they are working to understand the changes and communicate with any affected students.
“Whenever a new executive order or regulation comes out that impacts international students and scholars, we work closely with campus officials to determine the extent of the impact and to notify the affected students of the policy change,” James wrote. “At this point I cannot speculate further.”
Ludington connected recent political efforts with the downturn of pro-Palestine activity on college campuses this year.
“The protests this year have been minimal, and I think that it is pretty telling about the chilling effect on speech of official actions that are intended to stop protest,” Ludington said. “It does. It works. It stops people from expressing their opinions. It doesn’t mean those opinions aren’t still there — they just can’t be aired. That doesn’t make them any safer.”
