Headline-grabbing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests this week at Tufts University and the University of Alabama show growing momentum behind the Trump administration's battle against pro-Palestinian foreign students and faculty.   Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Thursday at least 300 foreign students have seen their visas revoked under President Trump, a far-higher number than what was previously known. "Trump has declared war on immigrants generally and international students specifically, and he's trying to exert his executive powers to the maximum extent he can,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a retired professor of immigration law from the Cornell Law School. "It will be up to the courts to see at what point he oversteps his authority.”   The Tuesday capture of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts student and Turkish national, was caught on video as plain-clothes officers arrested her on the street and took her away in an unmarked van. Ozturk’s lawyer said she was taken to a detention center in Louisiana after she wrote an op-ed last year in her school’s newspaper in support of Palestine. The government has said she was involved in “pro-Hamas” activities but has not given any details on those actions.    “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campus. We’ve given you a visa, and you decide to do that, we’re going to take it away,” Rubio said in response to a question Thursday about Ozturk’s arrest.   The administration has seen at least eight high-profile cases in its crusade against pro-Palestinian students and faculty, with most of them based on a rarely used law that says the secretary of State can deport a noncitizen who presents a threat to U.S. foreign policy.   Some of those swept up — such as Columbia University's Mahmoud Khalil, who earlier this month became the first pro-Palestinian demonstrator known to be arrested over activism — are legal permanent residents who haven't been accused of any crime. “There's a tension between everyone's right to First Amendment freedom of expression in the United States and this broad immigration ground that basically gives the secretary of State carte blanche to declare anyone a threat to our national security, and the courts will have to decide which wins out. And so, this could be going on for a long time,” Yale-Loehr said. Deportation cases can take a while to work their way through the courts as millions of immigration cases are in the legal system with only several hundred judges to handle them, meaning students could be waiting months or even years for resolutions on this matter.   In the meantime, fear is spreading on college campuses for foreign students, especially those who have participated in the pro-Palestinian protests.  “It's an unfathomably scary time. I have seen notices ... telling students, 'If you're here on a student visa, don't travel, don't cross the border,' because of how bad things are,” said Diala Shamas, staff attorney at Center for Constitutional Rights.   “The scope of the policy is so broad. It doesn't give any guidance. It doesn't tell you how to comply. It's just, really fundamentally chilling, and people are afraid to leave their houses,” Shamas added. “I know of students who are locking themselves in their apartment. There's a lot of fear happening right now.”   After a student visa is revoked, an individual has 14 days to get out of the country unless it is challenged in court and a judge rules to keep them in the U.S.   In at least one case, however, an assistant professor from Brown University’s medical school was deported despite a court order saying she was to remain in the country. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a court filing the agents did not know about the judge’s order and at "no time would CBP not take a court order seriously or fail to abide by a court’s order.”  Federal officials have been taking the foreign students that were arrested sometimes thousands of miles away from their homes to a detention center in Louisiana, making it difficult for families or attorneys to contact them. “ICE, as an agency, has demonstrated in these cases its desire to very quickly transfer these students to facilities far away from their communities, from their lives, from their lawyers, and I think we need to read into that what is the clear intent of trying to make any advocacy on their behalf as difficult as possible and to sort of stack the odds against those students and their advocates,” said Golnaz Fakhimi, legal director for Muslim Advocates.  “I think there is gamesmanship. I think that there is abuse that's reflected in some of these dynamics. And I think the intentions are clear. It's to frustrate the advocacy, impede access to courts and the rule of law and gain access to lawyers and take as punitive approach as possible in separating people from their communities and their families,” Fakhimi added.   ...read more read less