'Big crimes' by college students with visa problems are serious, but not so big
The University of Iowa’s Old Capitol on May 8, 2025. (Photo by Lyle Muller)
It looks as though the Trump administration was right about lawless international students in the United States. A bunch of them are in Iowa. If only they didn’t have a drinking problem.
That’s right. A lot of these foreign crooks have racked up some revealing records that have to do with too much booze. Most recently, The Gazette’s Vanessa Miller reported out of Iowa City that four University of Iowa graduate students suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in federal court to stay in Iowa have been convicted of crimes like drunken driving, speeding and driving without a valid driver’s license, with a disorderly conduct charge tossed in for one.
One UI student, a state Department of Health and Human Services epidemiologist and master’s degree candidate, had a deferred judgment for a 2023 operating while intoxicated conviction, since served and expunged, Miller reported. In other words, he did his time successfully and the record no longer counts against him. The president of the United States can’t even say that.
The stories of these four students are similar to what is being reported elsewhere around the country. More than 1,800 expulsions, now on hold under a Trump administration order, had been logged at more than 280 colleges and universities as of April 24, Inside Higher Ed reported. While some students seem to be targeted because they publicly supported Palestinian rights, others have simple misdemeanors on their record, although the White House is reporting that harden criminals like arson, assault and robbery are in the bunch.
A one-strike policy for international students who run afoul of the law, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and federal officials are warning. Rubio said in March that the visa cancellations are not related to political protesting but, instead, were akin to whether a person could be admitted into the United States if information the government knew then what it knows now about a student. Like, drunken driving arrests.
Worth knowing in this discussion, people with criminal records may apply for permission to be in the United States but the federal government warns that winning an appeal is a long way from being a given.
The New York Post reported April 28 that 4,000 foreign students’ visas had been revoked during the Trump purge, so far, and that more than 90% of what The Post story called “rogue students” had committed violent crimes like arson, assault, robbery, wildlife and human trafficking, child endangerment and domestic abuse, as well as drunken driving. The story does not break down the crimes by category so the share of drunken driving convictions creating that 90% is not being reported, convenient for the Trump administration trying to make its case.
Fox News Digital reported that it confirmed The Post story with an unnamed source who rattled off platitudes to Trump, but they are the only news outlets with major audiences reporting a 90% rate for crimes as severe as assault or human trafficking, at least according to several internet searches.
More prevalent are stories about international students flagged for having minor misdemeanors, like traffic violations. Or, because they participated in campus demonstrations that got out of control, notably the 2024 ones at Columbia University during which students held peaceful demonstrations but also forcibly pushed into and occupied a Butler Library room. Or, with no criminal records at all or, as the case at Columbia, participation in political demonstrations.
Graduate Herky on the University of Iowa Pentacrest on May 8, 2025. Most of the commencement ceremonies on the Iowa City campus was scheduled for May 15-17. (Photo by Lyle Muller)
Many of the students are in this country legally or with green cards, immigration law firms report. Besides those in Iowa, students at Midwest U.S. campuses like the University of Minnesota, Minnesota State University, Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Northwest Missouri State and University of Wisconsin have fought expulsion from the country.
Let’s not be mistaken. We want people to behave themselves within the law and especially for drunks to stay off the road. That goes for U.S. citizens and it goes for people who are guests in this country. International students are warned about the consequences of their behavior, even misdemeanors, although they should be able to expect due process instead of an excuse about having too many cases to ensure that all get it.
That due process reference is about Donald Trump writing on Truth Social: “We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years. We would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of Illegals we are sending out of the Country.” Oh, the cost of that confounding U.S. Constitution.
We also want to keep serious criminals out of the United States. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement report in 2024 stated that more than 13,000 immigrants who had committed homicide were not in ICE detention, and that’s a problem that cannot be ignored. Despite the rhetoric you hear from the previous president’s political opponents, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol arrested 17,048 people who tried to enter the country with criminal records in federal fiscal 2024, which ended last Sept. 30. That followed 15,267 the previous year, 12,028 in fiscal 2022 and 10,763 in fiscal 2021 during Joe Biden’s presidency.
Rubio is not wrong when he says having a visa to be in the United States is a privilege. But the crackdown on college students begins to break down when you know being in the United States is such a privilege you can get into the country with a so-called “gold card” investors visa for just $5 million.
“Wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card,” Trump said in late February when announcing the plan. Land of the spree.
Perhaps wealthy Russian oligarchs and other foreign business owners found guilty of crimes but with whom Trump has had business dealings can buy a pass. They could join the domestic crooks that Trump, himself a convicted felon in addition to being found liable in court for sexually abusing a woman, in his orbit. Then, there is the obligatory reference to the Jan. 6 rioters’ pardons.
The American Immigration Council has opined on this. Trump’s policy is part of a larger effort to limiting an asylum argument that immigrants from south of the United States had been using in the Biden administration to enter this county and starting a system that sets up immigrants to fail when seeking citizenship, the council wrote on Jan. 22.
In this system, immigrants have to register their status under a Jan. 20 executive order with immigration authorities if they already had not done so. But, they may be deported without a hearing and could not get work permits, even if they have a pending immigration application, if they had not registered previously in the program, the council stated.
“To get a handle on what these executive orders do, it is worth pointing out what they do not do: focus on immigrants convicted of serious crimes,” the council wrote.
To help you follow this, the executive order put a target on immigrants who have not registered, but opt to do so, the council suggested. That is because showing up to register means the immigrant previously was not registered and, thus, has been breaking the law. “Indeed, by invoking the registration provision, the Trump administration is threatening to turn all immigrants into criminals by setting them up for the ‘crime’ of failing to register,” the council stated.
Forgive yourself if Joseph Heller’s novel “Catch 22” came to mind.
“That's some catch, that Catch-22,' he observed. 'It's the best there is,' Doc Daneeka agreed.”
You wonder why there is an interest and hurry to kick out graduate students with misdemeanors — drunken driving is a felony in Iowa only upon third conviction — especially those who are ending their studies this month with graduation. It is in small part a deliberate way to keep a promise to “get rid of illegals,” as Americans frightened by the prospect of someone different than them like to say, even though visa-holding students are here legally.
The orders on visas — both the revocations and the suspension of those revocations — were given because Trump decided he could make them and because he and his followers like sticking it to disadvantaged people. They like sticking it to higher education institutions that allow politically liberal expression, too.
This is another example of the cruelty coming out of the White House during this presidency.
ASSOCIATED PRESS:
Most Americans disapprove of Trump’s treatment of colleges, a new AP-NORC poll finds
Lyle Muller is a retired Iowa journalist who still works as an independent contractor and professional adviser for Grinnell College’s Scarlet & Black newspaper. He is board member of the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting and Iowa High School Press Association, a trustee of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, former executive director/editor of the Iowa Center for Public Journalism that became part of the Midwest Center, and former editor of The Gazette (Cedar Rapids). He is a recipient of the Iowa Newspaper Association’s Distinguished Service Award, Iowa College Media’s Association’s Eighmey Award, and Iowa Newspaper Association’s Stratton Award.