April 6, 2025: Following this letter, the campus has issued a clarification regarding inaccurate reporting of visa revocations.

On April 4, 2025, Chancellor Javier Reyes sent the following message to the campus community regarding immigration actions affecting students on UMass-sponsored visas.
 

To the UMass community,

The university has learned that, throughout the course of this week and as of tonight, five international students have had their visas revoked and student statuses terminated by the federal government. I regret sending this news so late on a Friday; given that we learned of some of these revocations this evening, I felt it important to share this troubling news at this time.

In each of the five cases, the students’ legal status to remain in the United States has been revoked. The university was not notified by federal authorities of these status revocations and only became aware as a result of proactive checks in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) database. We will continue monitoring SEVIS for further updates.

We are connecting these students to on- and off-campus resources, including personal outreach from leadership within the Office of the Provost, Student Affairs and Campus Life, and the Office of Global Affairs. We also continue to work with the UMass Office of General Counsel and the Attorney General of Massachusetts to ensure that we do everything within our power to protect our community.

Over the past several days, there have been multiple similar reports of international student visas being revoked by the Department of State. These revocations are troubling on several levels.

• These actions have been attributed by federal authorities to alleged incidents, in some cases, as minor as off-campus traffic violations.
   
• In the past, students’ legal statuses in the United States were not immediately canceled due to a revoked visa. Under the new administration, in some cases, student statuses are being revoked within hours of the visa’s revocation. 

As reported in Inside Higher Ed, “[w]hen international students have their entry visas revoked, they almost always retain their legal residency status in SEVIS, according to immigration lawyers. They can stay in the country as long as they remain enrolled in courses and must reapply for a new visa if they leave. Now, as the Trump administration revokes hundreds of student visas each week, federal immigration officials also seem to be terminating students’ SEVIS status—paving the way for arrest and deportation.”

The only way that students are informed of visa revocations is via an email notification to the address they originally used to apply for their F-1 or other non-immigrant visa. If students worked with an agent or consultant to apply for their visa, it is possible that the agent or consultant’s email address was used. We encourage all students on visas to monitor the email address used to apply for their F-1 or other non-immigrant visa for notifications from the Department of State. 

Students on UMass-sponsored visas who receive any communications (phone calls or emails) purporting to be from the federal government should also contact the Office of Global Affairs, who will advise them of options and resources. Students on personal statuses such as parole, TPS, asylum, etc. should contact the Student Legal Services Office or their personal attorney. Additionally, UMass has established the Angel Fund to help meet the legal, academic, housing, living and counseling needs of students who are adversely affected by changes in federal immigration.

I want to stress how important our international community is to the vitality of our campus and assure every international student and scholar at UMass of our unwavering support as we confront this new reality.

Attracting students from every corner of the globe, higher education in the United States has always been the envy of the world.  Like so many others, I came to the United States to study through the student visa program. We came to better ourselves, better our communities, and better the country that welcomed us as scholars.

As I have stated before, we are working closely with the UMass system, the governor, the attorney general, and legislators at both the state and federal level to ensure that we remain true to our mission and that our legacy as a global campus lives on. We will continue to provide updates on these and other actions affecting our community through the Federal Actions website.

Sincerely,

Javier Reyes
Chancellor