Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

5. Department of Homeland Security · Notable

Cut student visas from enemy nations under the SEVP program

Partially done

141 5. Department of Homeland Security

“Prioritize national security in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP). ICE should end its current cozy deference to educational institutions and remove security risks from the program. This requires working with the Department of State to eliminate or significantly reduce the number of visas issued to foreign students from enemy nations.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    The fixed-admission-period rule was finalized. SEVP participants no longer hold open-ended status and must seek extensions from USCIS, which puts the security screening the Quote wants into the program's structure. It is `partial` because the second half of the ask — working with the State Department to eliminate or significantly reduce visas issued to students from enemy nations — is not evidenced by any DHS instrument, and student-visa issuance is a State Department decision outside this Recommendation's object.

  2. Attempted

    DHS proposed ending duration-of-status admission for F, J and I nonimmigrants and replacing it with a fixed admission period and an extension-of-stay procedure, so that the department can "better evaluate whether these nonimmigrants are maintaining status". That is the end of the deference to educational institutions the Quote objects to, proposed but not yet in force.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Two halves: tightening the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which is DHS’s to do, and cutting the number of student visas issued to nationals of hostile states, which is the State Department’s.

  • AAU v. DHS is not a challenge to the 2026-07-17 rule (reviewed 2026-10-12). Association of American Universities v. DHS, D. Mass. 1:26-cv-14520 (Kobick, J.), filed 2026-10-05 by AAU, AICUM, NAFSA and the Presidents’ Alliance. The complaint (https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/74919449/association-of-american-universities-v-us-department-of-homeland/) challenges two SEVP Broadcast Messages of 2026-08-12 and 2026-08-24 that reread “integral part of an established curriculum” in 8 CFR 214.2(f)(10)(i), so that curricular practical training is allowed only when the placement is mandatory for every student in the program, and that warn school officials of prosecution for approving it otherwise. The motion for a preliminary injunction and §705 stay was filed 2026-10-05, responses are due 2026-10-19, and no order has issued. The fixed admission period is not challenged, so nothing here can make this item blocked. The Broadcast Messages narrow schools’ discretion, which is near “end its current cozy deference to educational institutions”, but their object is work-based training, not security risks or visas from enemy nations, so they get no event. The OPT fee proposal of 2026-10-08 (FR 2026-20660, $70,000 initial OPT) was checked against this item too: it prices a work benefit and does not screen for security or reduce visas from any nation (nothing).
Action
restrict
Object
Student and Exchange Visitor Program
ID
312