Liu, a junior at a Texas university who has been in the US for almost seven years, is planning to leave the country earlier than he originally intended.

"I first came to the US to attend a boarding high school when I was 15. My goal is to eventually get a PhD," he told China Daily. "I thought I'd complete my education in the US, but now I am having second thoughts."

Wanting to be identified by his last name only for self-protection, Liu said he no longer feels comfortable in the US.

Liu is not alone in feeling this way. An online survey by Stop AAPI Hate found that a vast majority of international students feel unsafe, unwelcome and uncertain in the United States. That sense of fear drove down the enrollment of international students in the fall by 17 percent.

The information was collected between August and October with 96 percent of participants holding F-1 student visas. About 87 percent of surveyed students are pursuing graduate degrees and are from 21 countries. The top three respondents were from China, South Korea and India, with data suggesting that 72 percent of international students are from Asia.

The survey found that 88 percent of surveyed students are less civically and politically active in the US, and 85 percent said they changed their social media behavior and became more self-censoring.

About 81 percent said the current social and political climates have negatively impacted their physical and mental health, and they have created a third-country plan for future study or career in case it doesn't work out in the US.

"It feels like we are under siege by a government that is not trustworthy, and is in fact actively trying to dismantle the entire education system in the US so that an alternative far-right education system can be put in place," one student said in the survey.

International students, once warmly welcomed by the US, have been targeted by the US administration this year.

In March, Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student and green card holder married to a US citizen, was arrested and his green card revoked over his pro-Palestinian activism. Other students were also detained under the pretext of "national security".

Campus protests

In the spring of 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that international students involved in campus protests were "not welcome" and the government would "aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students".

The government briefly paused student visa interviews, then reinstated them under new rules that subject applicants' social media accounts to heightened scrutiny and surveillance.

Some students were turned away when they landed in the US. In one case, a Chinese student, identified by his last name Gu, was detained for 36 hours after arriving at Houston's international airport in mid-August with admission to a master's program in philosophy at the University of Houston. He was deported and banned from entering the US for five years.

There was no data indicating how many Chinese students met a similar fate at the border, but such anecdotal stories were shared on various social platforms.

Those measures and stories have created a climate of fear and instability on campuses across the country. The effects are profound.

According to the Institute of International Education, new international student enrollments declined by 17 percent overall this fall, reversing the growing trend for the first time. The sharp drop was mostly driven by a decline in arrivals from India.

The Association of International Educators estimated that the decline will cost the US $1.1 billion and 23,000 jobs.

The students are worried about their future stay in the US.

"I'm scared of ending up in indefinite detention or being deported to some other country other than my home country," a student said in the survey.

Their fears are not unfounded. Tae Heung Kim, a green card holder since 2011 and a PhD student at Texas A&M University, was detained by ICE in July when he returned to the US after attending a wedding in South Korea. He was not released until November when the government failed to produce court-ordered documents.

Some students advised other international students to consider different countries for studying abroad.

Stop AAPI Hate's Director of Data and Research Stephanie Chen told AsAmNews that researchers worked with over 1,000 student organizations to find participants. In the end, only 87 international students from 36 US colleges and universities filled out the survey. To protect respondents, researchers did not collect any personal information from them.