"The Day When It Happened"

COLBY

When I need time to think, I take the staten island ferry. It’s those big orange boats that cut across the bay. It’s about an hour round trip. I leave Manhattan, and I just sit. 

I watch the skyline shrink away. And the Statue of Liberty grow closer. The ferry goes right by her.

It's typically pretty busy. Kids, running around. People, taking pictures.

And I'm bringing you on my ferry ride today because there’s some stuff we need to think about, together.

I’m a journalist. And, right now, I’m also a college student. I go to Fordham University. 

And last year something really significant happened to international students at my school. All of a sudden, their status became uncertain. 

Last year, I began reporting on that story. I teamed up with a couple other student journalists. And together we wanted to contribute to the public record of our current political moment. To investigate what really went down. To clear things up. 

While conducting interviews for this project, we kept running into this same issue. International students were scared. 

They were scared to be associated with the project, let alone have their names on record. So, the only way we were able to have candid conversations — to bring their experiences to light — was to keep them anonymous. So, we’ve agreed to change the names of every international student you hear in this show. 

Together — you, me, these international students, domestic students, professors, admin — we’re gonna take a trip away from the Manhattan of our current moment, and into the choppy waters of years past.

And hope it really makes you think. Think about what it means for things to change. Think about what happened last year. Think about what you want your role to be in this changing world. 

Welcome to REVOKED? A series of radio stories about the visa turmoil that rocked Fordham university in 2025. And how the effects of that turmoil, as you’ll see, have not gone away. 

I’m your host and executive producer, Colby McCaskill.

ELENA

I'm Elena Dimitriou

ARIANNA

I'm Arianna Pinna

COLBY

And you're listening to Chapter 1, "The Day When It Happened"

COLBY

If we’re going to tell this story right, I think it’s only fitting that we begin at the moment when it became real for the student body. 

Not some digression about the politics of it. 

Or the context. 

Not yet. 

Just the moment it all began for the vast majority of the Fordham community. 

Here’s Elena — to take us to that moment.

ELENA

Riya is in bed at home. It’s a Friday evening. She’s on her phone, as usual. And, she finds out.

RIYA

I sat up immediately, and I was reading the email. And I just realized, Oh My God, this is an actual issue that is not going away.

ELENA

It’s an email that every Fordham student gets that evening. An email breaking the news that the legal status of a Fordham student is suddenly uncertain.

Riya is from India. She’s an international student. Which means she has a student visa. And, honestly, that makes the email a little more scary.

RIYA

You know, you think it’s one or two people, fine. It’ll go away, they’ll realize it was a wrong thing to do. And they’ll stop. Maybe there was some other reason for revoking the visas. 

ELENA

But then, the email almost makes it personal, at least closer than it had been.

RIYA

It was really weird, because we’d obviously been hearing about it in the news — students getting their visas revoked. And it kind of felt like a distant issue. 

ELENA

Other Fordham students started to get the news too.

AMAL

I was doing something that I do all the time — which is lay in bed.

ELENA

We’re keeping this student anonymous because they asked us too. But we’re going to call her Amal. She went straight to her mom with the news.

AMAL

And I was like: Ma! Me and my mom have that kind of relationship where I tell her everything in the most dramatic sense. So I’m like: Ma, you know what happened? Like this and this and that. 

...

And my Mom is very dramatic, personality wise, so I try not to scare her too much, because she gets worried for me. Even though I was born here.

ELENA

Amal is not an international student. She’s an American citizen. But that didn’t stop the fear.

AMAL

And as soon as I see her eyes widening, I’m like: No, no, no. It’s not going to be that crazy, don’t worry about it. 

But in my head, I’m truly worried. Not for myself. For the person, and for anyone else that this could possibly happen — because I knew some international students that were here at that time, at Fordham. So, I’m not worried for myself. I worried for my counterparts who were international students. 

ELENA

We wanted you to really understand this email. Because it’s the first message from the Fordham administration about this series of events. And it really sets the tone.

COLBY

Umm, do you have your phone on you?

SOPHIA

Yeah

...

Sometimes my phone doesn’t bring up all my emails. 

ELENA

And so we asked a few students…

COLBY

How about, can I give you my phone?

COLBY

Yeah. Do you remember getting this email? 

ANNAMARIE

Yeah.

COLBY

Can you actually, I know it sounds hokey,  can you read through it—?

ELENA

…to read it to us.

SOPHIA

Dear Fordham, I write with a heavy heart. 

Higher education in the United States brings together brilliant minds from around the world, producing ground-breaking research, remarkable teaching, and educating generations of students inspired by American education.

But as you have seen in recent news, several faculty have been stopped at the border or detained. And in the last few days, a growing number of students from a wide range of countries, have had their visas revoked without explanation and without notice.

ANNAMARIE

Today we discovered that this has affected one of our own undergraduate students.

For many of the brilliant members of the Fordham community joining us from countries around the world, this is a source of growing distress and anxiety. 

I wish it were within my power to offer you reassurance. 

SOPHIA

We have assembled a working group, including faculty members, to help us navigate these issues, plan our response, and provide support. That group will share more guidance shortly.

In the meantime, if something happens related to your immigration status, please call Fordham Public Safety

ZUZA

They are available 24/7 and know how to connect you to the appropriate resources. 

AMAL

With prayers, Tania Tetlow, President.

RIYA

From my personal experience, I never — I didn’t worry about it until I got an email from Tania Tetlow. It didn’t — wasn’t a thing in my mind that my visa could kind of be in danger. Even though I saw cases happening, and saw people who were in that situation. That email was kind of just like a jolt to reality. Like, okay, we have to be vigilant.

AMAL

For me, it was kind of like surprised, truly and honestly. Because I knew it was happening to other people, and other universities. 

ELENA

Last year, this was an ongoing issue at other universities.

 The Trump administration had returned to the White House in early 2025. And soon after that, stories about visa revocations, and arrested student activists, started popping up online.

 One of the most notable examples is of Mahmoud Khalil. He had been an international student at Columbia. One of the leaders of Columbia’s pro-Palestine protest movement in 2024. He doesn’t have a visa. He’s got a green card. But the government told him his visa was revoked. 

NOOR

You guys really don't need to be doing all of that.

ELENA

They arrested him in early March. 

Another student, Rümeysa Öztürk. She went to Tufts University, in Massachusetts. She was an international student, and had written an Op-ed calling for Tufts to disclose and divest from companies who had direct ties to Israel. Her visa was revoked because of that Op-Ed. They arrested her March 25th.

Those are just two examples of many more revocations and arrests. They weren’t isolated. They were part of a larger pattern spreading throughout the country.

 But until late into the spring semester, this hadn’t come to Fordham.

JUAN

Yeah, so it was happening throughout the entire country, right? 

COLBY

Yeah.

JUAN

And I was already reading about it. And I was like: Oh, wow. This is happening. This is a real situation. And this might affect people I know. And I’m kind of scared. 

ELENA

This is Juan, an international student from Latin America. 

JUAN

It made me a little scared, honestly. Because, I’m on a visa, and it kind of made me realize how real the situation had become.

ELENA

Here’s another international student. Lee, from China.

LEE

I think, this is already after this had become viral on the internet, right? So, I was aware of the situation already. And, well, my first reaction was: Okay, this is kind of late.

ELENA

For him, it didn’t come as a surprise, but rather as something almost expected. 

LEE

A lot of people are talking about it. Even on the Chinese version of TikTok, which is Douyin. They are pretty sensitive about this, because no students — international students — want to lose their visa, right? So, people are talking about — for example. We go back to China in summers, right? You can try to go back to the states a little earlier, you know? Maybe be more sensitive about what you say on the internet. Don’t break the law, don’t speed. Stuff like that. But overall, I think it’s not that scary, to me at least.

SOPHIA

Yeah. Again, just because — in my mind, it took them a while to address it. At least, not obviously. 

ELENA

And that’s Sophia Skelton. To her, it felt like Fordham’s email came too late. 

SOPHIA

I was expecting to get an email — not saying that someone had been affected by it — but that the school, I don’t know. Just acknowledgement by the school. I was expecting that earlier.

ELENA

Students across our university had mixed reactions. But for some international students, it felt like a revocation was looming over their head.

ANON

Well I know me and all my international student friends are — well, were really nervous in that moment. Because, there was no apparent reason. And the University just said that it was revoked. But no one said why. 

GUADALUPE

I felt super scared. I felt super — I felt incredibly bad for them.

ANON

So, we didn’t know if we were going to be one of those people. 

ELENA

They felt a need to strive for perfection.

GUADALUPE

First you need to try to be as perfect as you can. And then there’s not even the comfort that even if you're perfect, you might not get the visa revoked. It could also be just because of where you come from. Or what race — or, I mean — what your name sounds like.

ELENA

And then there was this guy. Michael. Michael Magazine. 

MICHAEL

And I’m like: What are we even talking about. Yeah, one of our own undergraduate student’s visas are being revoked? I wish I could offer you reassurance? Not going to say much else in the email. Call public safety if you need help. And prayers.

ELENA

He’s a student activist. Involved in climate justice. Immigration advocacy. That kind of thing. And when he read this email, that Friday night, more than a year ago, he kind of felt a sense of outrage. 

MICHAEL

From the president of Fordham University, one of the most powerful Universities in America, 

...

that also has access to the entire New York City academic community — is like: eh, you know. Thoughts and prayers, guys, good luck. Like, that’s basically the vibe that a lot of people got from the email. Which is not helpful, considering this was a time before a lot of other universities really made a public stance against this type of stuff. And so to see Fordham take this — for lack of a better term — lack-luster approach, in only — the first email, and the most important email. Because it is them introducing this as something that is a campus issue now, was insane.

ELENA

You’re going to be hearing from Michael throughout this series. He’s pretty critical of the Fordham administration. And he was one of a few student activists who tried to get Fordham Admin to do some specific actions about this visa turmoil. 

We're going to tell you more about his story eventually.

But he was just one out of a mass of students. 

Each with their own opinions, and emotions. Whether this was dismissal. Or fear. Or worry for classmates. Or worry for themselves. Or straight up anger. 

These international students still feel uncomfortable with us publishing their real names. Because they themselves have visas.  

 So, we’ve agreed to change their names.

But they still had very real reactions to this news. 

 And one more perspective for you to chew on. Fordham’s. We’ve been in contact with Fordham throughout our reporting. We interviewed some of them. And we’ve been giving them the chance to comment — before we publish. 

 Here’s one of their comments:

FORDHAM

The University was very intentional in responding to the changing landscape when guidance was available versus responding to rumor or media reports.”

ELENA

 And another comment.

FORDHAM

At the time of that email, there were no specific actions that international students were to take in response to the media reports. The University noted that we would share more guidance when it was available, and we did.

ELENA

Questions like: How will my school, Fordham University, handle this issue?

We’re going to answer that question. In just a minute. 

You’re listening to REVOKED? Don’t go away.

COLBY

We’ve made it to Act II. 

So, after this email on the evening of the first Friday in April, 2025 — more than one year ago — students are wondering: How will Fordham respond?

Our producer, Arianna, picks it up from here.

ARIANNA

Fordham created a new initiative in order to respond to this visa turmoil.

It started when President Tetlow —

MIKE

She had asked us to start getting together a kind of rapid-response group, a tiger team, if you will. 

ANNIKA

The tiger team, yes

CAREY

I did not put that name, but people do refer to it as the tiger team. 

MIKE

A working group, whatever you want to call it.

ARIANNA

As you heard in that original email, President Tetlow said there was this new working group. Less-officially known as the "tiger team."

Mike Treretola, President Tetlow’s Chief of Staff, told us about this group. 

MIKE

So, we put together a group that was filled with folks from functional areas across the university, as well as professors who had real expertise in these kinds of issues — or who, themselves, had gone through them, as either a student from another country, or as a faculty member from another country. 

ANNIKA

My understanding of it was a kind of Ad-Hoc group, spur of the moment effort by the University, to find some people to help them out in figuring out how to handle this moment. 

ARIANNA

Annika Hinze. She teaches Political Science. And she was one of the faculty members chosen to be on the Tiger Team.

ANNIKA

I think I was recommended as a person, because I research immigration, I’m not an immigration lawyer, but beyond the political background. I’m sort of broadly familiar with the legal aspects of it. Again, you don’t want me to represent you in immigration court. And you don’t want to call me if you have a legal immigration problem, but I have a broad understanding of this.

ARIANNA

They were a group of people tasked with asking the right questions.

ANNIKA

So, that’s what the group talked about: how do we communicate?

...

Should things be sent out to, say, the entire campus community? Or should they be sent out to international students as a group, right? So, how should the communication go? That was more what the group discussed. 

ARIANNA

Carey Kasten, a professor of Spanish, was also on the tiger team.

CAREY

It was, I think, unique — the first time I’ve ever seen that happen to kind of address the way the university is working through a joint task force between administration and faculty. 

ARIANNA

Fordham Admin recognized professors have a kind of ‘on the ground’ perspective that admin doesn’t.

And what’s really interesting is that the group was actually formed before any students at Fordham were affected. 

CAREY

I think we hadn’t met yet, but we were trying to come up with a time to meet. And that forced us all to meet. And so there were already faculty picked, and we were on the working group. And then I think it was after that, that we met for the first time. 

ARIANNA

Fordham had actually been preparing for this type of situation. 

CAREY

Because at the same time that we were having these meetings, lots of different universities were talking to each other. Right? 

Like there’s a whole system that works — like theres a New York network of schools, and a Jesuit network of schools, and a catholic network of schools. And a this network. And a that network. 

And so you can only assume that the people in these offices are in touch with colleagues in other schools. And learning about what’s happening in real time at other schools. So I just think nothing has happening in a vacuum.

MIKE

Oh yeah. This was not something that they just happened to log in and see that day. This was something that we knew was happening at other schools. We knew from — So, Sal Longarino is our Director of International Services. And he’s involved in a network of folks that are like him at other schools. And they have listservs and what not. So, we knew this was happening. 

...

We didn’t know exactly what it would be, who it would affect, what the circumstances would be. You can’t plan for everything.

ARIANNA

But they did plan for something. And that plan took this form: A group of faculty and staff specifically meeting to discuss how to handle the visa turmoil.

Fordham told us the group grew as more students were affected. But it got to be around 20. Maybe 25 at one point. That’s how many people were on the tiger team.

There hasn’t been really any coverage on this group, but it was — in fact — one of the main ways Fordham responded to this series of events.

You can’t plan for everything. But this was the plan.

So, a “Tiger Team” of more than two dozen people. Staff members, like Public Safety, Legal Counsel, and the Office of International Services. They’re assembled, willing to help. But help do what? What is a working group like this, actually able to do?

 From what we could gather, it was a lot of talking.

ANNIKA

I mean, we really just broadly talked through the issues that were coming up. 

...

I think we were giving some feedback based on what we’d seen with our students, with faculty, what we knew about the broader issues. 

ARIANNA

And it was mostly talking, because the actual decisions weren’t made by this group.

MIKE

This is actually helpful for you to know. 

ARIANNA

Again, Mike Trerotola, Chief of Staff to Fordham President Tania Tetlow.

MIKE

So, this group is more — they’re not the decision making group, if you will. They are really providing the right questions, the right analysis. The right thought leadership, if you will — to make sure that President Tetlow is making the right decisions there. So, they’re more advisory. 

ARIANNA

They weren’t making decisions, because they couldn’t make decisions — at least not expensive ones.

MIKE

That group does not have the financial ability to pay for these things.

ARIANNA

Even so, Carey and Annika explained to us, that they were still able to push for action. 

ANNIKA

We were, for instance, saying: You know, it would be great if the university could provide some legal support, to students, to faculty too. If they get stuck at airports, for instance, and can’t enter the country. 

ARIANNA

Annika is actually from Germany herself. Which means she already has experience with the immigration process. 

So she’s helpful as a professional figure, but she also knew her way around the block. 

She was asking questions like — 

ANNIKA

How can we reassure students? How can we reassure faculty? What can we do to make people aware that this is a perilous moment for international people broadly? But also, not make anyone more anxious than they need to be, right? Because there’s already enough anxiety. 

ARIANNA

And Carey has some expertise as well. She leads a group that studies immigration issues. They’re called the Initiative on Migrants, Migration, and Human Dignity. Both Annika and Carey are in that group. 

And she was able to use that research to help inform the tiger team.

CAREY

There were a few moments when I talked about accompaniment. 

...

It’s great to have a lawyer and everything. But you also need to make sure that the person who is the protagonist in the story writes the story. Right? 

You have to check in about what it is that they want. You have to make sure that they understand their rights and their situation. Your job is to tell them all the information. But you can’t make a decision for them. 

And just reminding people — and that comes from work with migrants. And I think that can be applied to anyone. It is all of our right to — we get to decide. We have autonomy about, or we should, about where we want to be, and how we want to be there. And so just reminding some of that. Some of those best practices. 

ARIANNA

So, Carey and Annika are talking. Throwing around ideas with the other members of the Tiger Team.

But, they couldn't actually make decisions. So, their involvement became mainly, a way to integrate the different parts of Fordham.

These professors used their expertise. They provided insight — in a time when their scholarship on immigration is really topical. 

They could also use the information they’d been given by the University, to help others understand this complicated situation.

CAREY

I think all the faculty felt it was our job to — we are in touch with students in different ways than student life or other people in the university, and kind of humanizing some of that. 

And then there was a whole other layer of faculty anxiety. People who were traveling for work, or for personal reasons. And, you know, faculty are also in visa processes, and had all kinds of questions about that.

ARIANNA

There were so many questions. A lot of confusion. And honestly, not a lot of definitive answers. 

And that’s because this was not a normal situation.

In fact, it was really strange. The situation Carey and Annika got to hear about first hand, as a part of this Tiger Team, was — to put it plainly — weird. 

This aspect of the story has been largely overlooked. Last year, when student reporters wrote about this event, we tried to be as authoritative as possible. 

But we missed something. We missed — what we now think — is a central mis-categorization.

It even came down to the word we were using. 

That’s where the misunderstanding began. 

And that’s where we’re headed next. 

That’s in a minute. Stick around, we’re just getting to the crazy part.

COLBY

You’re listening to REVOKED. It’s time for Act III.

So, we've done so much reporting and research for this project.

We’ve talked to a lot of people about this. We’ve done more than 30 taped interviews, with more than two dozen community members. 

Almost everyone we talked to used a specific word. We used that word too. Revoked. 

That’s just the way we talked about it. 

MIKE

So, thinking back to the day when it happened, when we found out the first student had had their visa revoked, it was odd.

CAREY

Like, when we were talking about what are the services that should be provided for people in — whose status was revoked. 

REGINA

Visas had been revoked throughout the country. 

RIYA

Yeah, it was really weird, because we’d obviously been hearing about it in the news — students getting their visas revoked.

JUAN

And I saw an instagram post about a student who got their visa revoked at Fordham.

AMAL

On Signal, no one really uses their full name. So the person had said like: Hey guys, I heard that someone — like a student from Fordham  — had their visa revoked. 

ANON

And the University just said that it was revoked. 

MICHAEL

Tetlow’s email was actually the first confirmation we had a Fordham student’s visa was revoked.

COLBY

Yeah. President Tetlow’s email described the incident as a revocation.

CAREY

And in the last few days, a growing number of students from a wide range of countries, have had their visas revoked without explanation and without notice.

ZUZA

Just represent the students whose visas got revoked.

REGINA

Shouldn’t be revoked at any moment

COLBY

On that first Friday in April — more than a year ago — this is what we thought! This is how we talked about it! 

The visa, of a student at Fordham, has been revoked.

And that’s how it was being explained by the US government. 

Specifically, Marco Rubio, the current Secretary of State. 

He’s one of the main government officials who is responsible for implementing US foreign policy. 

Marco Rubio was the guy talking about this in press conferences. He was the guy talking about this in front of congress. He was the guy that got quoted all the time.

MARCO RUBIO

Oh, we revoked her visa. It’s an F-1 visa I believe. We revoked it, and here’s why. 

COLBY

This is a press conference in late March, 2025. So, during that spring semester. But before the visa turmoil came to Fordham. Marco Rubio is talking about what the US did to that Turkish student from Tufts University. Rumeyza Ozturk. 

MARCO RUBIO

If you go and apply for a visa right now, anywhere in the world. Let me just send this message out. If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student, and you tell us the reason you are coming to the United States is not just because you want to write Op-eds. But because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalising universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus, we’re not going to give you a visa.

COLBY

We’re gonna wait to fully address the Pro-Palestine angle of all of this That’ll come in Chapter 2. 

But I do want to say, in this specific clip, Marco Rubio is making it sound like Rumeyza vandlaized a campus. Harassed students. Took over a building. But a leaked State Department memo made it clear: it was just the Op-ed that she wrote. Anyway. He keeps going.

MARCO RUBIO

So, we’ll revoke your visa, and once your visa is revoked, you’re illegally in the country and you have to leave. 

COLBY

So, visa revocations is the mechanism the US Government is using. And they’re using it a lot. The number of students affected at that time was in the hundreds.

MARCO RUBIO

Maybe more. It might be more than 300 at this point. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa. 

REPORTER

You’re saying it could be more than 300? 

MARCO RUBIO

Sure – I hope. I mean, at some point I hope we run out because we’ve gotten rid of all of them.

COLBY

This kind of talk kept going late into the spring. Marco Rubio testified before Congress in late May, 2025. And he was still answering questions about visas revocations.

These next clips are kind of messy. That’s because Marco Rubio is in an argument. He’s arguing with a Democrat from Washington state: Congresswoman Jayapal.

MARCO RUBIO

But I’m telling you in the meanwhile Mr. Secretary, let me be clear I have the authority. You’ve said that Mr. Secretary I will continue to revoke the visas of people that come in to tear this country apart. Let me reclaim my time. They’re on student visas, they’re guests.

COLBY

Congresswoman Jayapal is grilling him about that same student from Tufts University, Rumeyza Ozturk.

MARCO RUBIO

We will revoke the visa or anyone who’s in this country, as a guest, who's here to stir up trouble. Are you going to —

COLBY

And Marco Rubio is sticking with his story.

MARCO RUBIO

I’m responsible for revoking the visas of these people that come to tear this country apart. I’m asking you about this particular Never should have allowed them in this particular case.

COLBY

It’s kind of messy tape. He says, quote: I’m responsible for revoking the visas of these people that come to tear this country apart.

This was the story most people heard about: The US Government revoking student visas.

And for a visa to be revoked, that’s really disruptive. At the very least, now there’s this new thing you have to deal with. But then there’s the bigger a question about if you have to leave. You’ve moved countries. You’ve built a life, a home and a new community — is all that at risk of vanishing with a visa revocation?

MICHAEL

So, by law, when your visa is revoked — and you can find this on department of homeland security stuff — when it’s revoked, you have either two weeks or ten days. It’s a number I forgot off the top of my head. 

COLBY

See, we called it a revocation! Even me! Even Michael, this student activist. And he thought that meant the student had to leave the country — not at the end of the semester, but soon.

MICHAEL

But you have that amount of time to basically leave the country. They call it Self-Deport, before they’re going to come after you. That’s basically what they say.

COLBY

This was also an open question for the Fordham administration. 

 I talked with Fordham President Tania Tetlow about this stuff, about the visa turmoil, in an exclusive interview last fall. We’re going to be sharing bits of that interview as our story progresses. 

But one of the things she told me was that:

TETLOW

There was also real uncertainty about what this meant because normally if a visa is pulled or given a deadline by which you have to leave. So students were not sure and we were struggling to find out: Were they subject to being picked up.

COLBY

This was a real question people were trying to figure out. 

I couldn’t find the exact stuff Michael is referring to. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement — that’s ICE — has a page on their website all about self-deportation. And the language there doesn’t really even put a timeline on it. 

One line reads, quote, “If you’re illegally present in the US you don’t have to — and shouldn’t — wait for ICE officials to arrest you.”

Just a second ago, you heard Marco Rubio say this almost verbatim.

MARCO RUBIO

So, we’ll revoke your visa, and once your visa is revoked, you’re illegally in the country and you have to leave.

COLBY

So what did this all mean? Did that first student have to leave the country like Marco Rubio said, like Michael suspected, like President Tetlow wondered? 

And if so, how fast?

With all these questions and fears surrounding this specific part of our story, we wanted to get the best answer we could.

So, we interviewed an immigration law expert from Fordham’s Law School. Her name is Professor Jennifer Gordon.

And we started by talking about what exactly is a student visa.

JENNIFER

So, it’s a way that the U.S. government says to someone from another country that they can come and study here. Right? In a sense, it’s no more than that. It’s just permission from the U.S. government to attend a school here. Assuming you’ve been admitted, and the government’s approved the school and all of that.

RIYA

I don’t have my passport with me but I could show it to you. It’s just a sticker in your passport. 

COLBY

The international student from India, Riya, she kind of gave a run down as well. 

RIYA

It has biometric information that their computer scans. But it’s just like your picture, your name, what visa type you’re on, when it’s issued, expires. What address you’re studying at, so, like Fordham’s address is on your visa. 

COLBY

There’s also a piece of paper, a document called an I-20. It’s not in the passport. But—

RIYA

It’s the document that the school issues. It’s like a homeland security department that your school fills out for you, basically stating your course of study, how long your major will last.

COLBY

And you really only need it when you’re coming into the country. It’s kind of like a visa. It’s an official document that helps verify your situation as an international student.

So, if you’re an international student, and you’re coming to study here, you show up with your visa. And your signed 1-20. You arrive at — I don’t know — JFK airport in Queens. The visa — that’s 

JENNIFER

— what gets you here, and allows you to say: ‘Here I am.’ And then at the border, if you’ve been to an airport, you have to go through that CBP line —

COLBY

Customs, right? That’s where you are officially entering the country. 

JENNIFER

— They divide you into citizens and permanent residents, and everybody else. At the point that you’re undergoing inspection — which is what’s happening when they’re looking at your passport and all of that — they, independently, can decide whether to let you in. But the visa says the U.S. government has given you permission to come to the door.

COLBY

And then, at the door —

JENNIFER

— you have to be approved to enter.

COLBY

Jennifer said the customs agent can stop you from coming in. It’s not necessarily a sure-fire thing. 

They’re evaluating your documents. They’re checking their system. They’re making sure that you are who you say you are. 

But then there’s the flip side to that, right? Once you pass inspection at the border, you’ve been admitted. It wasn’t like the government didn’t let you in. You’ve been screened. Your documents proved valid. You entered, legally, if you want to use that term. You were all set.

JENNIFER

At that point, for most purposes, your visa is not relevant again until you leave the country and want to come back in.

COLBY

So, I asked the million dollar question: if your visa is what gets you to the door. And a student at Fordham was affected by this stuff, then what did that mean for them? Do they have to leave? And if so, how fast?

JENNIFER

So, what was happening in the spring, was the government was not, apparently, revoking people’s visas, mostly. What they were doing was canceling their entries in the database. And by canceling their entries, you know literally wiping them out of the database — 

COLBY

Like pressing delete? 

JENNIFER

I’m not one hundred percent sure. But I think that they were going into the database and either removing the person, or toggling off the validity of their presence in the database. And you have to be in the database to study. That created a lot of confusion. 

COLBY

It sounds like you’re saying that's not a revocation?

JENNIFER 

They’re two different things.

...

What the government was doing when they went into the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, SEVIS. S-E-V-I-S. That was the database. Was that they were terminating students in that database. But — 

COLBY

Terminating is the word they used? Or the word you’re using? 

JENNIFER

I think that they were — I think? We could look it up. But I think they were saying that people’s status — not their immigration status — but their valid presence in that database was terminated. But what created a lot of the confusion, was that it’s not clear. If you’ve been admitted, lawfully, on the visa, as everybody in that database had, and you’re in the country, and you were admitted to the country — then, if the government doesn’t revoke your visa, then what’s the effect of having your status terminated in the SEVIS database? And so, did students have to stop studying? Did they have to leave? 

COLBY

We were talking in June 2025. A few months after all this went down at Fordham. And this was still the first I’d heard about this. I was like: Not a revocation? I was like, what the hell is a SEVIS? What?

JENNIFER

They didn’t tell you why when they removed you from that database. And they didn’t even tell you that they had done it. And you, the student, can’t check the database. So, the school had to check the database. Which they wouldn’t ordinarily do. Usually the school is in charge of the database. And the government is in charge of the visa.

COLBY

Riya had heard this during the Spring 2025 semester. She worked in the Office of International Services, while at Fordham. And, as this stuff was going on —

RIYA

I was in the office one day, and I was like clearing out my stuff, and we were just chatting with one of the assistant directors there. And he told me that, when a visa got revoked, the process was such that nobody got notified. So, there was no way to know that a visa was revoked, unless the official logged in to the homeland security portal and checked every visa to see the status.  

...

SEVIS is, I don't know the full form, but it's the service you use to enroll your visa in. I might be off on this, you should research that, just to confirm.

COLBY

She’s basically right. As Jennifer said earlier. It’s the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System. S-E-V-I-S. SEVIS. It’s a database. You have an account, registered with the government, maintained by your school. It’s an online thing. And it’s under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security.

RIYA

It’s the system where we upload all our immigration information. And that keeps track of our visa status, our travel information, our travel documents, when we left the country, came back. Everything is on there. 

COLBY

One of her colleagues told her:

RIYA

there’s no automated email of: Oh, a student’s status has been changed. Nothing like that. It’s just on the system. And every official would have to manually check every day to make sure everyone’s status was okay.

COLBY

Everyday! Everyday, an employee of Fordham was checking this database to see if another student’s SEVIS record had been terminated. Actually, President Tetlow told us this as well. 

TETLOW

They were not even notified that their visa was pulled. We had to just check our system every morning to find out. 

COLBY

What’s more is that Fordham was, in fact, checking the database even before this stuff happened at Fordham. They were both forming a Tiger Team, and checking the SEVIS database — all before April 4th, 2025. Mike Trerotola said that in our interview. And Fordham confirmed it.

MIKE

I don’t know the dates off the top of my head, I’m sorry. 

COLBY

The April 4 is when the first email went out to the whole student body. So that was the day that it was actually terminated. 

MIKE

Ah, correct, yes. Then we would have been checking it before then.

COLBY

Okay, so as best as we can figure, when this first started happening at Fordham in the spring of ‘25, it wasn’t a revocation.

It was a SEVIS record termination. 

Jennifer explained that this was happening across the country. 

And when we started to put together the different interviews we did, the unified picture sounded to be more in line with the SEVIS terminations that Jennifer said were happening at this same time. No official notification. No reason given. No clear way to respond. Only visible through the SEVIS database, that Fordham had to monitor. 

And as we were doing our final fact checks for this chapter, Fordham confirmed it. 

The first student at Fordham was affected by a SEVIS record termination. Not a visa revocation.

SEVIS termainations have happened before. But by the school. You know, if a student drops out, the school would know and could update, change or somehow terminate their account. 

But for the government to go in and unilaterally change a SEVIS record — that was unheard of. Truly.

COLBY

What did that mean for students? Do you know? 

JENNIFER

Nobody knew. 

COLBY

Wait, wait, wait. So, this happens. And everyone looks at each other and says: We don’t know what to do? 

JENNIFER

That’s correct. 

And so immigration lawyers are holding webinars. And hundreds of people from universities and the students themselves are attending. And students are desperate to know what is the impact on me, and schools are desperate to know. And the answer is, we don’t know. Because this isn’t what happens.

COLBY

This Isn’t What Happens. That phrase has just stuck with me throughout this whole year. Because, it’s so true to the time. You look at the thing right in front of your face — that’s happening as you live and breathe — and all you can think is: This Isn’t What Happens. 

On the one hand, government officials were revoking student visas, and moving to deport international students. That was the thing they were talking about a lot.

But on the other hand, other government officials were going into a database, and terminating records. Essentially, an even less public way to unilaterally change the status of international students. 

That’s the other thing: the visa revocations are administered by the State Department. And the SEVIS terminations by the Department of Homeland Security. Two different governmental bodies! So, it’s not the same people doing it.

The exact numbers are a little iffy, still. We’re going to put together an explainer page about how we tried to get to the bottom of it on our website. So, go check it out if you’re really curious. But it seems that, at least during the Spring of 2025, it seems that SEVIS record terminations were actually more common than Visa Revocations.

This Isn’t What Happens. But it was. This central misunderstanding — a fact that we think hasn’t been a part of the larger narrative — This is why we named this series “REVOKED” with a question mark. 

Because, at least in the beginning at Fordham, they weren’t revocations.

If this sounds complicated, that's because it is! One of the ways Fordham tried to deal with the complexity of it all was paying for outside lawyers. Fordham told us they covered the cost of initial legal consultations for all the students who would eventually be affected by this.

But that didn’t mean everyone else was getting answers too. The rest of the student body still had a lot of questions. A lot of fear. 

And, honestly, the turmoil these actions caused has continued to linger at this University. 

Over the next few chapters, we’ll walk with you through this crisis, all the way to the present moment, and show you why exactly we might say that.

This series of events was maybe the first time since Donald Trump returned to the White House that the Fordham community began to ask big questions about its role in this new political reality. 

Would it fight back? If so, how loudly? 

Would it stand with its students? If so, for how long? 

Does it even have the power to help?

But first, we’re asking some other basic questions: Why did the government do this? And does the pro-palestinian activism from the year before have any relevance here?

Our answers, to those questions, next time, on REVOKED?