Along with thousands of other international students, I breathed a heavy sigh of relief on Tuesday. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) finally gave up on implementing a rule change that would’ve forced most of us to self-deport from the United States before fall semester starts.
ICE had previously reversed the exemption made during the COVID-19 pandemic that allowed hundreds of thousands of international students to continue living in America while universities gave classes fully online. My graduate department at Columbia University is currently grappling with whether or not to hold in-person classes, and the Trump administration essentially decided I should just get deported if it doesn’t. It was an attempt to blackmail universities into reopening, and it used me and people like me as pawns in a political game.
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