At least five students and several other graduates from Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh have had their student visas revoked by the federal government recently by the Trump administration.
They are among the nearly 300 visas that have reportedly been revoked across the United States.
One of those students includes CMU student Jayson Ma.
Ma came to the United States nine-years-ago for high school and then Carnegie Mellon.
He tells KDKA Radio’s Marty Griffin says the email he got that his visa was terminated came “abruptly.”
As to why his visa was canceled, Ma said he has his suspicion why.
Ma’s lawyer, Immigration attorney Joseph Murphy, tells Griffin that Ma had a DUI charge three or four years ago but he went through that was expunged after going through an Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program.
“That’s not guilty, what are they doing?” asked Murphy.
Ma said the reason he wanted to speak up is because he doesn’t want to be accused of something wrong that he isn’t involved in.
There are rumors of Chinese spies at Carnegie Mellon.
“I think that’s part of the reason I decided to speak up,” said Ma. “If I were to be doing something suspicious, I think that this would not be a wise move.”
Ma says he came to the United States to study and it not an American citizen, but he is scared.
“Getting arrested, you know, sent to detention centers, deported, not being able to finish school, losing my pets, there’s a lot of things I’m scared of,” said Ma.
Ma says he has only one semester left and already has most of his “hard” classes out of the way.
“I was really looking forward to spending my last semester on campus . . . it’s kind of been robbed,” said Ma. “I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
Murphy says he believes the moves are intended to create “an environment of fear” and a lot of innocent students are getting caught up in it.
Visas can be canceled for a number of reasons, but college leaders say the government has been quietly terminating students’ legal residency status with little notice to students or schools. That marks a shift from past practice and leaves students vulnerable to detention and deportation.
The list of colleges that have discovered students have had their legal status terminated also includes Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, UCLA and Ohio State University.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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