Five international students at two private colleges in the Quad Cities have had their student visas revoked by the Trump administration, the Quad-City Times reported on Wednesday. Two of the students are enrolled at St. Ambrose University in Davenport and the other three attend Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois.
“Given the fast-moving situation, and the fact that we are still assessing impact and implications, we are not able to speak about this at this time,” Augustana College said in an emailed statement. “As we learn more and as the situation becomes clearer and more certain, we may be able to share more information at a later date.”
According to the college, “Offices on campus have been supporting the affected students and working with them so that they understand the resources available to them to navigate this difficult and unexpected situation.”
Augustana faculty and staff were informed of the revocations in an email from the President Andrea Talentino on April 11.
“We are still assessing what options are available to us to assist these students in completing their semester credits,” Talentino said in that email.
Last December, the annual Open Doors report by the Institute of International Education ranked Augustana “sixth among baccalaureate colleges nationwide for the number of international students it enrolls.” The college had 165 first-year international students during its fall 2024 semester, a record for Augustana.
“Augustana has really built the infrastructure to support international students,” Liz Nino, Augustana’s executive director of International Enrollment told KWQC when the Open Doors report was published. “I think that’s one of the main reasons why we’ve been so successful. International students have been coming here for many years and so we’ve really built up the support mechanisms to make sure that not only can we recruit them, but we can also retain them.”
According to the KWQC report, “St. Ambrose University is also seeing an increase in international students. The university is currently serving 63 international students and is set to add 10 more for the upcoming spring semester.”
In an email to the QC Times this week, St. Ambrose President Amy Novak said it is the university’s policy to provide guidance on “potential next steps” to international students in the event of a visa revocation.
“Where possible, we are allowing students to apply for emergency funds through [St. Ambrose’s] student emergency fund to cover costs associated with this required transition,” Novak said. “Students who are returning to their home country are being given the option, where possible, to complete their coursework online.”
In its ongoing and unprecedented mass revocation of student visas, the Trump administration is relying on a previously seldom-used provision of a law from the early 1950s that was intended to facilitate McCarthy-era expulsions of non-citizens legally in the United States who held political views the government disapproved of.
Inside Higher Ed has been tracking student visa revocations nationwide. On Tuesday, when Little Village reported on student visa cancellations at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa, Inside Higher Ed’s tracker was reporting almost 1,200 students at approximately 140 colleges and universities had been stripped of their legal status. After the tracker was updated on Wednesday, those numbers grew to more than 1,300 students at over 210 institutions.
The visa revocations at Augustana College and St. Ambrose University are not yet listed on the tracker as of Wednesday evening.
