Beyond the Ivy League, International Students at Rural Colleges Are Being Detained by ICE

At a student housing complex near the university, residents went about their business. Bright moods matched the weather: the weekend neared and there were just a few more weeks to go before summer break.

But it wasn’t just students at the housing complex that day. Right before lunch, plainclothes agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) pulled up in unmarked cars and took 20-year-old international student Mohammed Hoque into custody. The agents had followed Hoque, a management information systems major from Bangladesh, as he was returning from a coding class. He was arrested in front of his parents, who were in town visiting, the day before the family was to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the month-long dawn-to-dusk fasting of Ramadan.

On April 9, responding to a lawsuit filed by Hoque that argued he was unlawfully jailed because of his advocacy on social media for Palestinian rights, an immigration judge ordered him released on a $7,500 bond, determining that Hoque did not pose a flight risk. But an immediate appeal filed by Department of Homeland Security ensured that he remained detained and his F-1 visa revoked.

On May 6, after more than a month in detention, a U.S. district court ordered Hoque’s immediate release, saying there was sufficient and clear evidence of “viewpoint-based targeting” over Hoque’s social media posts and that he was not a danger to the public.

“It feels like our Eid for us. It’s one of our biggest festivals for Muslims,” one of Hoque’s family members told Sahan Journal upon his release, asking not to be named of out fear of government retaliation.

Like many of the students with records revoked by the Trump administration, Hoque has a minor charge on his record—disorderly conduct and fifth-degree assault. The charges are not considered removable offenses according to immigration law. But DHS has said he’s a “threat to U.S. public safety.”

Similar scenes have played out around the country in recent weeks. ICE detentions at universities like Tufts, Columbia and Harvard have made national headlines. But more quietly, international students have also been targeted at smaller, rural universities and colleges, like Minnesota State Mankato (where the present author teaches). These incidents attract less attention and as a result, the scope of detentions and revocations may not be fully realized.

International students face two threats. One is revocation of student visas. Once a visa is terminated, a student technically is in the country illegally. Estimates have put the number of visa revocations at nearly 1,500 by the end of April, but many have since been reversed. At Minnesota State Mankato, 12 visas were initially revoked and 11 since have been reinstated.

Students also can be detained in ICE custody. As of late March, about one dozen students and researchers at universities nationwide have been detained.

About 10 days after Hoque’s arrest, fellow students held a rally on the Minnesota State Mankato campus.

Rallies and protests in this climate can walk a fine line. Jameel Haque, an associate professor of history at Minnesota State Mankato and director of the university’s Kessel Peace Institute, says many universities want to play it safe.

This may be one reason the actual number of student visa revocations is under-reported. In April, Inside Higher Ed interviewed more than a dozen officials at small colleges who could not publicly confirm student visa revocations and asked that their institutions be kept anonymous to protect students’ privacy and avoid possible retaliation by the Trump administration.

“The thinking at [many] universities is, if you’re punched in the face, lie down and play dead,” he says. But while university administrators fear of attracting attention and possibly retaliation, students feel differently, he says. At Mankato, “they’ve been protesting for Palestine for 18 months and repeatedly being punched in the face. We’re not getting down.”

A protest rally was also held in early April at the Freeborn County Jail in Albert Lea, about 60 miles from Mankato, where Hoque was detained at the time. The jail is one of three in Minnesota that contracts with ICE to hold detainees.

Haque says it’s one thing to protest in a town like Mankato, which votes reliably blue. But a place like Freeborn County is solidly red. The local news station reported several hecklers passed by the rally, including one who got out of his car to confront protestors.

“If we showed up at a protest here in Mankato, I feel pretty confident. We’ve worked with the police, we’ve notified the police, they haven’t messed with us,” Haque says. “I wasn’t that confident that we could go to the Freeborn County Jail and the police would not pull me over on my way in or my way out of town.”

Many rural colleges and universities have had a long history of welcoming international students and can have large international student population relative to the entire student body. Minnesota State Mankato has 1,800 international students out of a total student body population of 15,200. In 2024, it ranked 15th nationally in international student population among master’s institutions.

At the local level, many community leaders recognize the benefit international students can bring to economically depressed rural areas. Many of these communities face a shortage of young people, as a younger generation looks for job opportunities in larger metropolitan areas. That, combined with lower birth rates, can put rural businesses in a bind. International students often take the option of extending their visas after graduation, especially if they are working in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields.

At Minnesota State Mankato, many of the part-time on-campus jobs are filled by international students, who are prohibited from working off-campus.

“When you drive around campus, every single person ticketing cars, every single person directing traffic, the security at events, it’s all international students. The dining hall—international students,” Haque says.

William Coghill-Behrends, dean of global education at Minnesota State Mankato, has heard a variety of plans from international students going forward. Some are planning to stay in Mankato through the summer, worried that if they go home they may not be able to come back. Others are deciding to return home to visit family.

While international students aren’t a monolith, Coghill-Behrends says, “I can say, generally speaking, people are afraid.”

Even though many student visas have been restored, it is unclear if ICE is gearing up for a new round of revocations and detentions. Court documents released at the end of April suggest ICE is developing new justifications for termination of Student Exchange and Visitor Information System (SEVIS) records.

Thus far, all that faculty, staff and fellow students can do is support international students as much as possible. Coghill-Behrends credits his staff for working “day and night” to support students. Advising appointments that used to take about 20 minutes are now twice or three times as long, with staff providing emotional support in addition to academic planning.

He hopes that the long tradition of encouraging international students in Mankato will continue to bring students to town.

“They’re definitely feeling the love and support,” he says. “That speaks real volumes, and it’s why this place continues to be such a magnet. Like, if we didn’t do that, we wouldn’t have a big population [of international students].”

Rachael HanelMore by this author →

Rachael Hanel began her career as a newspaper reporter and now teaches creative nonfiction at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She’s the author of Not the Camilla We Knew: One Woman’s Path from Small-Town America to the Symbionese Liberation Army (2022) and We’ll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down: Memoir of a Gravedigger’s Daughter (2013).