US universities issue advisories over potential Trump travel ban

US colleges and universities are issuing warnings to their international students to return to campus before Donald Trump assumes office as president in preparation for a repeat of potential travel bans seen during his first term.

More than a dozen US schools have issued advisories. Some students must be back soon anyway since their spring semester begins before the president-elect takes office, but others are warning that students who depend on an academic visa may be at risk and should return to campus before Trump’s inauguration on 20 January.

Although Trump’s plans for any travel bans remain unclear, the president-elect has threatened to invoke a travel ban as he did via executive order during his first term, which affected those from predominantly Muslim countries: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

This included students and faculty of higher education institutions. More than 40,000 people were refused visas as a result of the ban, according to the US state department.

The list of schools includes Ivy League universities such as Harvard and Brown, Boston schools such as Northeastern University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other schools around the country, from Johns Hopkins University to the University of Southern California. Some offer classes that begin the day after inauguration day.

Cornell University told its students that a travel ban involving the 13 nations Trump previously targeted “is likely to go into effect soon after inauguration”, and that new countries could be added to the list, particularly China and India. It advised students, faculty and staff from those countries to return to campus before the semester starts on 21 January.

Cornell also warned these students to carry all relevant documents and ensure they are up to date, with a suggestion to also have on hand “evidence of funding and certificate of enrollment or transcript”.

Other schools didn’t go so far as to say a ban is likely but instead advised students to plan ahead and prepare for delays.

In an email to students on special visas shared with Axios, the University of Southern California said it “is especially important given that a new presidential administration will take office on January 20, 2025, and – as is common – may issue one or more executive orders impacting travel to the US and visa processing. While there’s no certainty such orders will be issued, the safest way to avoid any challenges is to be physically present in the US before the spring semester.”

Wesleyan University’s office of international student affairs wrote in a letter to students: “If you are planning to travel internationally over winter break, we strongly recommend that you re-enter the US and return to campus by Sunday, January 19, 2025.

“With the presidential inauguration happening on Monday, January 20, 2025, and uncertainties around President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for immigration-related policy, the safest way to avoid difficulty re-entering the country is to be physically present in the US on January 19th and the days thereafter of the spring semester.”

More than 1.1 million international students are “from more than 210 places of origin studied at US higher education institutions during the 2023/2024 academic year, a 7% increase from the previous academic year”, according to Open Doors, a data project funded in part by the US state department.

Students from India and China have accounted for more than half of all international students in the US.

Jacky Li, a third-year environmental studies major at University of California, Berkeley, will be traveling home to China on 21 December and returning on 16 January, though he made his plans months before Berkeley officials sent the advisory. He told the Associated Press that worry is growing among international students.

“There’s a fear that this kind of restriction will enlarge into a wider community, considering the geopolitical tensions nowadays around the world, so the fear is definitely there,” Li told the news agency.

“If the US is really a champion of academic freedom, what you should do is not restrict this kind of communications between different countries of the world,” he added.

Trump has previously said he’ll revive the travel ban and expand it, pledging new “ideological screening” for non-US citizens to bar “dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots and maniacs”.

“We aren’t bringing in anyone from Gaza, Syria, Somalia, Yemen or Libya or anywhere else that threatens our security,” Trump said at an October 2023 campaign event in Iowa.

Trump also vowed to “revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities” in response to the wave of campus protests in support of Palestinians in Gaza and divestment from Israel that swept the country earlier this year.

The Associated Press contributed to reporting