AMHERST — University of Massachusetts officials are offering a series of rapid responses to help six international students continue their studies on the Amherst campus, even as their visas are revoked and their student statuses are terminated by the Trump administration.

“We are taking a whole campus approach to this,” Kalpen Trivedi, the university’s vice provost for global affairs, said in an interview on Monday.

While UMass will see a handful of visa revocations among its 5,000 or so graduate and undergraduate international students during a typical school year, what is different this time is the accompanying removal of their student statuses in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System database, known as SEVIS.

“Termination of student status in SEVIS is the new wrinkle,” Trivedi said. “That narrows our window of response.”

The revoked visas and terminated student statuses were announced in a letter Chancellor Javier Reyes sent to the campus Friday evening. With peer institutions across the country being affected, UMass representatives from the Office of Global Affairs began monitoring SEVIS, ensuring that students are aware of any changes in their immigration status or their right to be in the United States.

“Until now, the university has never needed to check SEVIS in this manner,” Reyes wrote.

Even though it’s a manual process, with no lines of communication from the federal government and no courtesy alerts, UMass is coordinating a “very rapid response,” said Kenneth Reade, executive director of immigration services. This comes even in the face of having some students unaware of the visa revocations, especially if they don’t regularly use, or have access, to the email from which they applied for F-1 or other non-immigrant visas.

Reade said the university’s work is beginning with attempts to get a student’s immigration status straightened out, using the NAFSA: Association of International Educators, of which UMass is a member, to network and share information.

“These very agonizing situations are happening at almost all campuses,” Reade said.

Then there is outreach to the student by the provost’s office and academic affairs to work out the best way to maintain their enrollment and their progress toward earning a degree.

“We care deeply for the students, and are doing absolutely, positively everything we can for them,” Reade said. “The motivation is for them to feel supported and protected.”

So far, he said, there has been a positive reaction from the affected students, who are not being identified, but are a mix of graduate and undergraduate students, none of whom have dependents who are affected by this situation.

Trivedi said it’s unknown why the six students are affected, and there doesn’t appear to be any pattern based on their home countries.

The Massachusetts Daily Collegian identified one of the students as a sophomore from South Korea, who was notified he has 10 days to leave the United States after receiving his notice on April 4.

Unrelated to protests

UMass officials say that the revocations are unrelated to the pro-Palestinian protests that took place during the 2023-2024 academic year, when nearly 200 people were arrested, between a sit-in at Whitmore Administration Building and an encampment near the Campus Pond.

While the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in mid-March alleged there has been antisemitic discrimination and harassment at 60 campuses across the country, including at UMass, and warned of potential enforcement actions, there doesn’t appear to be any relationship to the six students with revoked visas and student statuses, according to information posted on the university’s federal actions updates website.

In a statement released Sunday, the university writes there is “no known connection with either the campus’ federally mandated participation in active OCR Title VI complaint processes or with students’ engagement in activism.”

UMass officials also clarified that the university played no role in terminating the visas or student statuses, and had not been asked for any information, not provided any information and was not notified that any status terminations would be happening,

“UMass Amherst has no evidence that information it was required to provide to the Department of Education in the course of any complaint process in this or any previous administration has any relationship to any revocation and/or termination impacting the immigration statuses of any UMass Amherst student.”

In October 2023, 57 people, mostly students, were arrested during a sit-in at Whitmore, while 134 students, faculty, staff and community members were arrested during a breakup of an encampment last May 7.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week, though, that some of the students across the country are being targeted for their involvement in protests, along with others tied to “potential criminal activity.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn’t immediately respond to the Daily Hampshire Gazette’s request for comment.

Massachusetts Teachers Association condemns

Revoking visas and terminating student statuses is being condemned by the Massachusetts Teachers Association, whose president, Max Page, is a professor of architecture at UMass.

On Sunday evening, Page and Vice President Deb McCarthy issued a statement responding to what they view as the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on students and their schools, colleges and universities, calling it the “trampling of the rights and freedoms of students and educators as this president reaches for authoritarian control.”

“It is beyond reprehensible that the Trump administration revoked visas for five (a sixth student was identified on Monday) foreign students studying at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and terminated their student status — all carried out without any contact with university officials,” Page and McCarthy said. “This disgusting subterfuge follows the illegal abductions and detention of Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk and Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil and threats to many others.”

The statement also mentions other actions undertaken by the Trump administration to attack colleges and universities, such as threats of withdrawing federal funds for lifesaving research and academic work, and the recent letter from the Department of Education to state education leaders demanding they sign a pledge to not support diversity, equity and inclusion programs, or else risk losing federal funding.

“We all must stand against Trump’s attempts to dismantle higher education as part of his larger war on democracy,” Page and McCarthy said. “We urge state legislators and elected officials to reject at every turn Trump’s coercive tactics and take the necessary legal steps to turn back such threats. We expect transparency and cooperation from school, college and university administrators in protecting students and workers, and ensuring our rights and freedoms remain intact.”