University of Minnesota Says ICE Detained International Graduate Student

ICE hasn’t said why it detained the student, and the agency did not respond to a request for comment.

A person walks on campus at University of Minnesota in Minneapolis on April 21, 2020. Glenn Stubbe/Star Tribune via AP

Leaders from the University of Minnesota said in a statement this week that an international graduate student is being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The school’s leadership said ICE had detained the student on March 27 at off-campus housing, describing the situation as “deeply concerning.” The graduate student is enrolled at the university’s Twin Cities campus business school.

ICE hasn’t said why it detained the student, and the agency did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

University of Minnesota officials said the school is offering the student legal services and other support and that the school did not share information with federal agents, who did not provide them advance warning about the detention.

On March 28, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz posted on social media platform X that he is seeking more information.

“I just spoke with Homeland Security to get more information and I will share when I learn more,” Walz said.

“The University of Minnesota is an international destination for education and research. We have any number of students studying here with visas, and we need answers.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on March 27 that the United States may have revoked more than 300 visas so far, as he spoke about people who receive U.S. student visas and then engage in criminal activity.

“Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa,” Rubio said during a press conference in Guyana. He said if foreign students ”want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus,” then they’re not going to retain their visas.

“If you lie to us and get a visa and then enter the United States, and with that visa participate in that sort of activity, we’re going to take away your visa,” he said.

On March 9, ICE arrested a former Columbia University graduate student, Mahmoud Khalil, who is Palestinian and a green card holder with permanent U.S. residency, following his participation in protests against the Israeli government in 2024.

Weeks later, the Department of Justice forwarded a message from ICE, instructing a pro-Palestinian activist and foreign graduate student at Cornell University to surrender himself to the agency’s Syracuse, New York, office to be taken into custody.

The student, Momodou Taal, had sued the Trump administration to prevent the deportation of foreign students accused of anti-Semitism. He is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and Gambia.

On March 25, ICE detained an international graduate student, Rumeysa Ozturk, at Tufts University outside an off-campus apartment complex in Somerville, Massachusetts, according to a campus-wide email from university President Sunil Kumar. He wrote that the university had been told that Ozturk’s visa was terminated but that he was working to verify that information.

It was not clear whether Ozturk was detained for the same reasons as the other students, as ICE did not respond to a request for comment at the time. However, she had co-authored a student newspaper story urging Tufts to break financial ties with Israel after it declared war on Hamas following the terrorist organization’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel.

On March 29, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the deportation of Ozturk, ruling that she cannot be deported while the court determines whether it has jurisdiction over the case.

Bill Pan, Aldgra Fredly, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.