Chinese international students are the foremost targets of Trump’s student visa restrictions. Now, their place at Yale and their ability to speak freely seem more precarious.
Smile ’28 had always planned to study at a U.S. university. As an English literature enthusiast, she enrolled in an international school in Shenzhen, China before attending boarding school. In late April 2025, Smile, who asked not to disclose her last name for fear of risking her visa status, submitted an application to renew her F-1 visa—a “nonimmigrant visa for a temporary stay” for students pursuing full-time courses of study at U.S. institutions.
She landed in China on May 12, with an interview appointment at the U.S. Consulate General in Guangzhou scheduled for two days later. Hoping to scout out the consulate premises, she arrived in the city a day before her appointment. The consulate had changed since her last visit five years ago, when she applied for a visa to attend high school. This time, she encountered newly added rows of metal railings outside the embassy doors—and the second Trump administration’s antagonistic policies towards Chinese students.
Between May and August, I spoke to eight international students from China about their lives since Trump’s inauguration. All of them either declined to speak on the record or use their full name for fear of putting their visa status at risk. Some also feared retaliation from Chinese authorities.
Chinese students have been the foremost targets of the federal government’s student visa revocation and restriction campaign. On May 27, the State Department announced a pause on scheduling all new student visa interviews. A day later, President Trump announced new policies to “aggressively revoke visas” for Chinese students, especially those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
On June 4, he issued a presidential proclamation suspending entry to the United States for any international student studying at Harvard University. Five days later, his travel ban targeting the citizens of nineteen countries took effect. Then, on June 18, the White House lifted the visa interview freeze but began enforcing a stricter application criteria, including an intensified social media screening for applicants.
With the United States and China engaged in a trade war with no end in sight, Chinese students are caught in the crossfires of a diplomatic and economic battle. Many also hope to evade the CCP’s authoritarian rule, but find themselves targeted by the Trump administration’s suspicions against Chinese nationals.
The students I spoke to came to America for the freedom and flexibility of a liberal arts education. But circumstances under the Trump administration—surveillance and limitations on political expression, attacks on “critical fields,” student visa interview freezes—have left them uneasy about their place at Yale and their ability to speak freely.
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The day after she arrived in Guangzhou, Smile got to her 8 a.m. visa appointment thirty minutes early only to see streams of people lined up in front of her. The queue snaked around the barrier-lined embassy premises.
Most international students who study in the United States apply for an F-1 visa several months before classes begin. For Chinese students, this visa typically lasts five years before it needs to be renewed. Smile, who last renewed her visa at the beginning of high school, needed to renew it once more to enter the United States in time to start her second year at Yale.
As Smile turned in her application materials and recorded her fingerprints, she began to feel nervous. She noticed that applicants left their interviews with slips of yellow, pink, or green paper—a procedure that didn’t exist when she applied five years earlier. Speaking to the woman in front of her, she learned that yellow indicated approval, and pink denial. Green meant that the embassy or consulate needed additional information before they could make a decision.
In her visa interview, the consulate officer posed customary questions to Smile: where she studied, what her major was, what her plans were after graduation. Then he paused and asked: “Do you have any social media?”
It was a question that Smile was anticipating. Yale’s Office of International Students and Scholars (OISS) had sent memos about increased social media checks for international visa applicants. “But I think I was nervous after he asked that question,” she said. “It makes you think: what are they going to find on my page that potentially jeopardizes [my visa]?”
The experience also reminded her of mass surveillance in China. The CCP strictly controls free speech and political expression. Any individual that sensitive—such as criticism of the CCP or its leaders—risks severe punishment, including imprisonment. Internet companies are legally required to monitor content that the government deems harmful or disruptful to social order. An extensive system of internet censorship, known as “The Great Firewall,” blocks access to major international media outlets.
Nearly all of the Chinese students I spoke to mentioned being hesitant to speak publicly about political issues. Cora ’28, an international student from China who asked to be identified by a nickname for fear of retaliation from U.S. and Chinese authorities, noted that most Chinese people grow up acutely aware of the risks of talking politics. She still remembers the first time she overheard a semi-political discussion in a public space in China. “I was on the subway and heard two women talking about Russia and Ukraine. And I just realized at that moment: I’ve never heard anyone in public talk about something like that.”
Juliet ’29, another international student from China who asked to be identified by a nickname for fear of putting her visa status at risk, said that the Chinese educational system rarely encouraged free discussion. “Our political science class is basically reciting what the government wants us to think,” she said.
One major reason why Juliet wanted to study abroad was to participate in political discussions and examine global issues she cares about—such as gender equality and women’s health—from diverse perspectives. Trump’s attacks on higher education, many of which target initiatives and research related to gender, has made her question whether she can still pursue her interests at Yale.
“Ever since the new administration,” said Juliet, “the States have never felt more like [China].”
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After Trump’s inauguration, international student offices have advised Chinese nationals to avoid participating in protests. Trump signed a January 29 presidential action threatening to deport international students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests. In a “Know Your Rights” webinar in early April, Yale’s OISS advised international students to be particularly cautious in all demonstrations, noting that arrests, convictions, or even publicized photographs could risk one’s immigration and visa status. Cora still remembers the very first protest she attended. Students had gathered after allegations of sexual misconduct had surfaced against teachers at her U.S. boarding school. The experience, she said, felt surreal as someone who had grown up in China. “It was really weird even just being there,” she said. “When you hold a political opinion, it’s not just thinking, I believe this is right or wrong. It’s more complicated.”
For Cora, there’s still a blurry line between a U.S. citizen’s first amendment rights to protest and an international student’s ability to come into the United States and do the same. She’s unsure whether she thinks protests should be a foreign national’s guaranteed right—in China, it wouldn’t. But she does believe that before Trump, the United States’ ability to offer all students the right to protest and free speech was one of its most unique—and appealing—features.
“As an international student, you could come in and be like, ‘I have an opinion about what’s right with the world, and I can express that without being scared of being retaliated against and being deported somewhere,’” Cora said.
Retaliation against protesters is not the only way the federal government discourages international students from expressing potentially contentious political opinions. After resuming student visa appointments in June, the Trump administration ordered all visa applicants to make their social accounts public, escalating a social media vetting process meant to identify applicants who may be hostile towards the United States.
Cora, however, said that her worries of U.S. surveillance over her social media accounts did not originate with Trump’s policies. They started long beforehand.
“Because I’m from China, you get this increased awareness that holding an opinion publicly is probably going to get you tracked, even if an administration is not explicitly admitting that,” she said.
She remembers going to her visa interview in the summer of 2024, when Biden was president and no official social media vetting process had been in place for F-1 applicants. “In the line, I was literally worried—oh, wait, I follow some pro-Palestine accounts on Instagram. What if they asked me about that?”
She has since unfollowed those accounts.
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When the visa officer asked Smile if she had social media, she stammered. “No…no?” “You’ve got to have social media,” the officer said.
Smile nodded. He slid her a piece of scrap printer paper under the glass window pane. She jotted her Instagram handle down. The officer asked if she had WeChat. She hesitated, and he continued: “Of course you have WeChat, right?”
She wrote her WeChat ID down, but wasn’t sure if she remembered it correctly, so she offered to jot down her phone number as well. The visa officer refused. “We’ll find you.”
“Of course they could find me,” Smile said. “But it was just one of those really sobering sentences that I was like: wow. This is a well-oiled machine.”
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Masters and PhD students studying certain STEM subjects often face extra scrutiny in visa applications and revocation initiatives. According to Emma Zang, associate professor of sociology at Yale, students pursuing advanced studies in STEM are more likely to work with what the U.S. government considers sensitive information.
Under the Trump administration, many undergraduates also avoid studying what Trump has outlined, with little clarity, as “critical fields” susceptible to espionage. This likely includes studies related to science with military or national security applications, like artificial intelligence and biotechnology.
In May 2025, the Stanford Review, a right-wing undergraduate publication at Stanford University, wrote that a CCP agent impersonating a student at Stanford allegedly tried to recruit an undergraduate as a spy for the Chinese government. The student was conducting sensitive research on China. After interviewing multiple professors, students, and China experts, the Review concluded that the CCP was orchestrating a widespread intelligence-gathering campaign at Stanford.
However, a New York Times investigation on the article found that its conclusion stands on weak grounds: the Review did not mention that the only Chinese spy named in the article had her visa fraud charges withdrawn a year after the initial allegations. Such conclusions exacerbate suspicion over the presence of Chinese researchers and scholars in general— most of whom, as the Times wrote, are “not here to spy or obtain information for their government.”
“Ever since the new administration,” said Juliet, “the States have never felt more like [China].”
The Trump administration’s national security concerns about China’s role in critical sectors were not unfounded,” Zang said. “But their approach to addressing those concerns was often inefficient and lacked strategic coherence.”
Ordinarily, international students hoping to find work in the United States are incentivized to major in STEM. All students receive twelve months of temporary employment authorization, known as Optional Practical Training (OPT), after graduation. However, students graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree are eligible for an extension, giving them an additional twenty-four months after graduation to find work in the United States.
But, the Trump administration’s public denouncements of Chinese students studying “critical fields”—which mostly fall under STEM—discourage international students from pursuing popular STEM majors such as physics and computer science.
Kay, a Chinese international student who asked to be identified by a nickname for fear of putting her visa status at risk, is a senior undergraduate student looking into biology PhD programs.
Most PhD students from China get a five-year student visa for their studies. By contrast, some biology PhD students only receive one-year visas due to concerns about biotechnology competition and espionage. If they leave the country after the expiration date, they must apply for a new visa to reenter. But student visas are entry documents. If students never exit the United States, they can stay for the entire duration of their study without having to renew their visas.
Kay noted that applying for visas annually feels risky for many biology PhD students from China. A successful renewal process should take no more than sixty days, but with the Trump administration’s restricted visa interview process, it could be longer. Biology is an experimental subject: taking several months of leave sets back research. Many of these PhD students, Kay said, opt to not return home for five years instead.
Viki ’29, Chinese student who asked to be identified by a nickname for fear of putting her visa status at risk, also recalled family and mentors advising graduate students to remain in the United States. She intends to study physics but wants to stay open to other fields for more options.
“Any STEM student would kind of feel uncertain about the future,” she said. “It’s imposing some kind of psychological barrier. Some kind of fear.”
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As of August 18, the Trump administration has revoked the visas of six thousand students, including those of four Yalies—two Chinese graduate students and at least one South Sudanese student. The two Chinese students soon had their F-1 visa statuses restored.
But on August 26, Trump spoke at a cabinet meeting at the White House: “I like that other countries’ students come here,” he said, as reported by The New York Times. “You know what would happen if they didn’t? Our college system would go to hell very quickly.”
A day earlier, he told reporters at the Oval Office that he would let six hundred thousand Chinese students into the country—twice the number of Chinese students currently enrolled in a U.S. institution. This drew backlash from Trump’s supporters, including Steve Bannon, one of his former advisors. “There should be no foreign students here for the moment,” Bannon said.
Juliet’s own embassy appointment was originally scheduled for late May before it was cancelled by the freeze. When interview appointments reopened on June 18, she hopped on the online site, where a July 23 slot was the earliest option. “It works well for me,” she said, “but for other students who might have an earlier start to the term, it’s not ideal.”
Smile, whose appointment took place before the freeze, had left the consulate with a green piece of paper—meaning officials needed to review additional information. Her passport, updated with a fresh visa page, arrived in the mail two days before the appointment freeze. “My mom and I were like, ‘God damn, we got lucky.’”
Shaken but relieved, Smile felt like she was finally allowed to return to her second home— even if it was a home she needed permission to enter.
Having left China at age 14, there are fewer and fewer things tying her to her home country. Most of her friends are in America. She has spent the better part of her formative years in American boarding schools and among American peers. And she is more fluent in English than Chinese.
“I struggle to say the words ‘I am American,’ because I’m not,” she said. “But given a choice, I would stay in America.”
Being educated in the States has also allowed her to dive deeper into her passion for the written word. A literary editor and poet, Smile struggles to imagine a world in which she is not able to think and write in English. “I can write better in English, read better in English, than I can in my mother tongue,” she said.
Yet she is still an international student. Her ability to be here is still determined by the U.S. government. She remains a target of Trump’s anti-immigration policies. And she is unsure about the future that the country will hold for her.
Smile’s consulate experience, with its metal railings and increased social media vetting, had changed since her visit before high school. But the bulletin displayed in the embassy—“Staying in America is a Privilege, Not a Right”—remained.
Two days before her sophomore year began, Smile landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. An immigration officer inspected her updated visa. He stamped her passport. She walked through customs without an issue—uncertain whether she would be able to again, next time.∎
Kelly Kong is a sophomore in Morse College and an associate editor for The New Journal.
Photos by Gabriel Haley
