Some incoming LSU international students have been barred from entering the country and attending the university because of a travel ban instituted by the Trump administration, internal emails obtained by the Reveille from the university’s International Student Services reveal.
“All my dreams and goals have been shattered,” one student said in an email to ISS after receiving the news of the travel ban.
The travel ban was a proclamation issued on June 4 by President Donald Trump’s office completely or partially prohibiting travel from 19 countries to the U.S.
ISS told the Reveille it didn’t yet have the number of students now unable to attend the university because of the travel ban, as check-in is still ongoing.
The university had 152 students from the banned countries in spring 2025, including 134 from Iran, according to LSU enrollment data.
Students affected by the travel ban
After the ban was issued, ISS advised returning students from affected countries that already had visas to get to the U.S. as quickly as they could before the order went into effect on June 9.
New students and scholars, however, wouldn’t be able to make it into the U.S. in time under their I-20 forms and therefore couldn’t attend LSU. The beginning date that an I-20 allows a student to be in the U.S. — 30 days before their program’s start date — was after June 9.
“Our hearts are heavy as we send this email,” ISS said in its mass email to those students barred from attending school.
The options for those students who were unable to make it to campus were to defer enrollment indefinitely or enroll in LSU Online, ISS said in emails.
It’s unclear at this time when Trump’s travel ban will expire.
Many students reached out to ISS regarding the visa and travel ban challenges, emails showed. Several of them asked for ISS to advocate for them. These students’ information, including names and nationalities, was redacted by LSU.
“Is there any way you could be our voice and help ensure that the efforts and aspirations of so many dedicated students are not lost?” one student banned from travel said in an email to ISS.
“It feels unjust to categorize [redacted] in this manner, as we have never participated in terrorist activities,” another student said to ISS in an email.
ISS generally responded to these messages by saying it had “shared students’ concerns with LSU administration” and it would “keep students informed of any updates,” according to emails.
In at least one respondent email, ISS said it was “troubled by the additional challenges to prospective students.”
A visa interview pause for international students instituted by the Trump administration in late May also slowed some LSU students, according to ISS emails.
That has since been lifted, though the subsequent backlog and a new social media review process that was the reason for the pause has caused delays in visa approval, ISS emails showed.
Fear of deportation
One international student whose home country isn’t included in the travel ban said that many international students feel they must always be careful to avoid deportation and prepared for the day they might not return to their apartment.
“I had a career and I put it on hold to become a student again,” the student told the Reveille. “I don’t want to sabotage that in any way, so I just have to be careful.”
Under Trump, the U.S. has revoked around 6,000 student visas with 4,000 of them because of violations against U.S. law. ICE has detained some international students residing in the U.S. legally, most notably Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student who was released in June after three months. It’s created a fear that the same thing could happen to other international students.
The same student said he and his peers often have conversations about what to do if someone disappears one day, and they’ve discussed contingency plans.
“If I don’t return by this time, you need to be careful and ask around,” the student said as an example of the conversations. “I may have been detained by an ICE agent or somebody might have come and just arrested me.”
International students were also sent an email in April from ISS that the Reveille obtained about phone calls from scammers claiming the student will be deported if they don’t pay money, a threat students have paid attention to given the current climate.
“We have heard of students getting phone calls from scammers stating the student will be deported unless they pay money to the scammers,” ISS said in the mass email.
ISS assured students that government agencies don’t contact students by phone unless they were contacted first and advised students not to give out personal or financial information over the phone.
Shortly after, on May 13, the FBI issued an official public service announcement “warning the public about a fraud scheme targeting foreign individuals lawfully residing in the United States on valid student visas.”
More on the travel ban
The countries that are subject to a full travel ban are Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
The countries subject to a partial ban, which includes a student visa travel ban, are Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
The administration provided various reasons for why these countries were selected for restrictions, including sponsoring terrorism, lacking a “competent or cooperative central authority for issuing passports or civil documents” and having a high rate of overstaying visas.
Trump also instituted several iterations of travel bans during his first term, including his controversial “Muslim ban” in 2017 shortly after taking office.
