US universities are quietly trying to find ways to protect their students from the threat of deportation, without risking being targeted by the Trump administration for funding cuts, scholars say.

International students across the country are facing having their visas revoked or being detained by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as part of a White House-promised crackdown?on so-called Hamas sympathisers on college campuses.

Miriam Feldblum, president and chief executive of the Presidents¡¯ Alliance, told Times Higher Education that volatility, uncertainty and unpredictability have created an atmosphere in which international students ¨C and other students and staff that do not have US citizenship ¨C feel unsafe.

She said universities and colleges had done their best to prepare campuses for the first months of Trump¡¯s second term as president, but these unexpected developments were starting to spread the sort of anxiety and panic that institutions had worked hard to prevent.

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Students have been arrested or detained at Columbia University, the University of Minnesota, Tufts University and the University of Alabama, while rumours of ICE agents being spotted have caused unease at many other campuses.

In response, institutions are providing ¡°know your rights¡± presentations on how students should deal with federal immigration officials, restricted campus buildings to ID holders only, offered one-to-one consultations?to students who are worried about their immigration status, and have paid for international students to consult with external immigration attorneys.

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Feldblum said colleges should designate what are public and private spaces on campus and require ICE agents to have a judicial warrant and not just an administrative warrant to enter.

¡°That¡¯s something that campuses need to know because they want to do two things¡­be fully in compliance with the law, and support their non-citizen students and employees.¡±

Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of immigration law practice at Cornell Law School, said campuses do not have to proactively work with immigration officials, but neither can they interfere with their work.

He said this was partly an intentional strategy to avoid confrontation with a Trump administration, which has reportedly threatened to freeze hundreds of millions of dollars in grants from Brown University and Princeton University in recent days.

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¡°Academic institutions worry that if they are too public about helping international students, the federal government could retaliate by cutting their federal research funding or even barring them from enrolling international students in the future.

¡°It may not be the only strategy, but it may be the best strategy for now,¡± he added. ¡°You see that in other sectors too: big companies are not openly complaining about new tariffs but are working behind the scenes to try to get their products exempted.¡±

Robert Shibley, special counsel on campus advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said the deportation of students has had a ¡°big chill¡± on campus freedom of speech ¨C but colleges are stuck in a ¡°tough¡± situation.

¡°We have a big government, and they have a lot of ways that they can apply pressure on universities and a lot of discretion to do that. And so, I do think that there¡¯s a huge component of them being afraid to be next in line to be targeted.¡±

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And Feldblum warned that wider potential damage goes much further than threats to individual students but ¡°really strikes at our reputation as the premier destination for international students to come study¡±.

¡°It¡¯s really important for us both to, in the moment, respond, support our students, our officers who are trying to navigate this and our communities, but also to recognise that we need to take bolder action to ensure that that this doesn¡¯t have more lasting impacts.¡±

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patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com