By SOPHIA DA SILVA
Capital News Service
WASHINGTON – A researcher at the University of Maryland lost her job last summer. She was from Colombia and here on a student visa extension. Not having a job meant she had to go back home.
Her lab lost federal funding earlier this year and couldn’t afford to keep her on. No longer being associated with the university, she was left without housing, without health insurance and without access to information from the university about her options under immigration laws.
“The issue here with these funding cuts is, it’s not only that your research is done, it’s that your immigration status is also affected,” she told Capital News Service.
She asked CNS not to identify her for fear of being targeted.
Her story isn’t unique. This year the Trump administration launched a crackdown on international students including deportations, visa revocations, interview pauses and travel bans. Recently proposed changes to F-1 visas threaten to make international students even more vulnerable.
American universities have already seen a decline in foreign student enrollment as a result of new visa policies. The International Trade Administration reported a 19.1% decline in F-1 arrivals last August compared to the same time last year.
“This is not the U.S. that (it was) when I came here,” the Colombian researcher said in an interview before she departed the United States.
F-1 visas – the visa most students come to the United States under – allows students to stay in the United States under “duration of status”; visa holders are allowed to stay in the United States as long as they are making normal progress on their research or academic programs.
A new policy, proposed by the Department of Homeland Security in August, would eliminate duration of status and only allow students to stay up to four years. If the students exceeded that time, they would have to apply to extend their stays.
“Imagine doing four years of your degree and then being told, ‘no, you actually have to go back and try to reapply for a visa’,” said University of Maryland Graduate Labor Union organizer Rose Ying.
Applications for extension-of-stay visas are costly to students, including processing and legal fees and subject to backlogs, according to the University of Maryland’s comment on regulations.gov opposing the Trump administration proposal. And there are no guarantees that extensions will be granted.
The Trump administration argued that its new policy is necessary to counter “student visa abuse”. The University of Maryland said in its comment that getting rid of duration of status only puts more work onto U.S. Citizenship and immigration Services, resulting in even more backlogs.
Maryland as a whole has started to see a decline in international student enrollment, especially in the fall semester. CNS analyzed the data of over 38,000 international students’ enrollment between 2020 and 2025 from five major Maryland public universities: the University of Maryland, College Park, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Towson University, Salisbury University and Frostburg State University.
(This data set does not distinguish between new and re-enrolling international students each year. The University of Maryland, College Park and Towson University do not disclose the number of students from countries with fewer than 10 enrollments.)
The enrollment of international students began to decline in the fall of 2023 and that decline multiplied significantly this fall.
Some universities, including the University of Maryland, College Park, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County – which account for approximately 90% of international students in this dataset – showed a significant decline in enrollment this fall. The other three universities actually showed an increase in enrollment.
Student enrollment by continent overwhelmingly demonstrated a decline this fall with a few exceptions.
The number of Asian students decreased from the fall of 2023 to the fall of 2024, and had a larger drop this fall. While the number of students from most Asian countries, including India, declined, the number of students from a few countries, like China, increased.
After increasing since 2020, European students’ enrollment saw a small drop in the fall of 2023, followed by a larger decline this fall. Most European countries followed this trend, except for a few, such as Spain, where the number continued to grow.
The enrollments of foreign students from North and South America also saw a significant decline this fall.
African students’ enrollment dropped this fall for the first time in six years, including students from Nigeria and Ghana, who accounted for the majority of international African students in the data.
Most international students in the United States are graduate students. Many come here for research institutions that have far more resources than their foreign counterparts.
That’s why the researcher from Colombia said she came to the University of Maryland four years ago as a master’s student.
She was working in Colombia for a non-governmental organization and needed some data for a project.
“My supervisor at the time, she said, ‘oh, check this website, this lab’… And I was like, ‘Oh, ok, that’s so cool that they have the entire world, and it’s free,’” she said.
She was impressed and when she got her acceptance letter, she said she was excited to be part of that impressive work. In addition to research and academics, she said she got life experiences she wouldn’t have otherwise.
“What are the chances, besides the university or through the university, that I would meet a girl from a small city in China. I have never been in China. She has never been in Colombia,” she said.
She’d begun to build a life here and hadn’t thought that four years later she’d have to leave the way she did, with just a month to wrap up her life.
She finished her master’s degree in 2022 and started what is known as optional practical training – a kind of F-1 extension that allows students to work in their field after graduation – when she started working at the university. She was supposed to have another five months to work on research, to make money and figure out her next move.
“I’m still processing like, okay, this is over. And even like all the things that I have, collecting and buying over these four years, now I just feel like I have one month to get rid of them,” she said.
The Colombian’s official title was faculty specialist. Her job included developing curriculum, supervising graduate students and supporting and conducting research that now has stopped.
“I don’t think I would have the equipment. I don’t have the data. I don’t have the computer power to run those processes. So I think that research, that project died. It’s over,” she said.
Having a hard deadline for F-1 visas means lost momentum for a lot of international students, especially for those seeking doctoral degrees, which take a median of 5.7 years to complete, according to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.
In its comment to the federal government, the University of Maryland said the administration’s new policy takes discretionary power away from universities, an argument Georgetown University reiterated in its comment.
“The ability of PhD students to complete their studies will be in the hands of (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) and not their higher education institution,” wrote Susan Dougherty, the University of Maryland’s director of International Students and Scholars Services.
With less time on their visas, international students said they have felt pressured to rush their degrees, with potentially serious consequences for careers in their chosen fields.
“ if you rush to finish your Ph.D., then it’s possible that like you didn’t get to publish (research) while you were doing your Ph.D. And not being able to publish your Ph.D. work while you’re doing your Ph.D. usually means that it’s a lot harder for you to publish afterwards,” said a fourth-year doctoral student at the University of Maryland, also on a foreign student visa. She asked not to be identified.
The new policy doesn’t just affect doctoral students.
The National Center for Educational Statistics says the median time to complete a bachelor’s degree is 4.3 years. Dual majors and joint undergraduate-graduate programs can take even longer.
The administration’s proposed policy would also prohibit students from changing educational objectives, including transferring or changing a field of study.
The University of Maryland said that this shows a misunderstanding of graduate education, where students often shift focus, move labs or move with advisors as their education progresses.
“There’s already situations on campus where labs are kind of toxic environments for one reason or another, and switching labs has saved people’s careers,” said Ying, who is currently a sixth-year doctoral candidate at Maryland.
Universities worry that these constraints take away the flexibility that make the United States so attractive to international students.
While changes to F-1 visas have not been implemented and DHS currently has no timeline for implementation, many other policies affecting international students have.
The American Association of University Women sponsors around 60 women from other countries to study in the United States. The organization encountered issues this year during a visa interview pause imposed by the Trump administration in May.
“A number ended up having to defer their fellowship to next year. And many ended up just declining them entirely after the delays just continued to cascade and they knew that they didn’t have a chance,” said AAUW CEO Gloria Blackwell.
Blackwell said that even when fellows did arrive at their host universities, their research and studies were affected by funding cuts.
“I feel like in some way, also, the US is losing some …high-qualified professionals,” said the researcher from Colombia.
She said that international students already have to prove themselves – adapting to a new system, new country, new language – and get important training from the United States. She said that these new policies are unfair.
Along with all the work and people she had to leave behind, the Colombian suffered a sentimental loss: her plants.
“It’s a piece that was alive and a piece that was a witness of my time here,” she said. “We have been growing together and we have been through seasons, they have lost some of their leaves and I have lost some of my friends.”
