A number of universities in the United States have advised international students to return early from winter break ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration as there is growing fear of another travel ban like the one that stranded students abroad at the start of Trump’s last term.

According to CNN, uncertainty are spreading across many US college campuses as Trump has pledged more hardline immigration policies upon his return to the White House, including an expansion of his previous travel ban on people from predominantly Muslim countries and the revocation of student visas of “radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners”.

In a report on the development on Thursday, CNN noted that more than 1.1 million international students enrolled in US colleges and universities during the 2023-24 academic year.

International students, CNN reported, generally have non-immigrant visas that allow them to study in the US but don’t provide a legal pathway to stay in the country.

“It’s a scary time for international students,” CNN quoted 23-year-old Pramath Pratap Misra, a student from India who graduated from New York University (NYU) this year with a bachelor’s degree in political science. NYU had the most international students in the US — more than 27,000 — during the last academic year.

“We’re very uncertain about the future,” said Gabrielle Balreira Fontenelle Mota, 21, who’s from Brazil and is a junior studying journalism and international relations at NYU. “I’m not from a Muslim country or from China, which are places that Trump usually criticises. So I don’t feel as vulnerable as other international students. … What makes me a little bit more concerned is the ideological screenings that [Trump] said he will be implementing.”

NYU’s leaders offered reassurance in a post-election e-mail last month, saying that “as a global institution, we believe that the cross-border mobility of our students and scholars is of critical importance.”

“We will be monitoring any immigration-related proposals, laws, and actions that could be of concern to our community,” the e-mail said.

On campuses from New York to California, students not only buckled down to take finals before winter break but some also braced for possible disruptions to their lives and the possibility of not being able to complete their studies. Some universities have urged students to put off or cut short travel plans outside the US before the inauguration.

According to CNN, Cornell University’s Office of Global Learning advised students who are travelling abroad to return before the January 21 start of the spring semester or to “communicate with an advisor about your travel plans and be prepared for delays”.

“A travel ban is likely to go into effect soon after inauguration,” the university warned students late last month. “The ban is likely to include citizens of the countries targeted in the first Trump Administration: Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Myanmar, Sudan, Tanzania, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and Somalia. New countries could be added to this list, particularly China and India,” CNN reported.

Administrators at the University of Southern California (USC), which had more than 17,000 international students during the last academic year, urged foreign students in an e-mail to be back in the US one week before Trump’s White House return, saying that “one or more executive orders impacting travel … and visa processing” may be issued. USC has the largest number of international students in California.

“While there’s no certainty such orders will be issued, the safest way to avoid any challenges is to be physically present in the US before the Spring semester begins on January 13, 2025,” said the USC Office of International Service, according to a report in the student-led media site.

Additionally, Trump’s promise of “mass deportations” reverberates beyond critical industries such as agriculture, leisure, and hospitality, construction and health care: It potentially complicates matters for some students regardless of their winter break travel plans, the CNN report said.

“The president-elect has, at the same time, promised to ‘automatically’ give green cards to foreign nationals who graduate from US colleges, a proposal that — if pursued by Trump and passed by Congress — could pave the way for potentially millions of international students to become legal permanent residents,” CNN said.

However, the network noted that shortly after Trump made that pledge in June a campaign spokesperson said that group would be limited to the “most skilled graduates” and screened to “exclude all communists, radical Islamists, Hamas supporters, America haters and public charges”. Public charges refers to those who rely on or seek public assistance.

At the same time, CNN noted that Trump hasn’t publicly mentioned the proposal since June, and it’s not clear how his new Administration will approach the issue.

One day after the presidential election last month, University of California, Los Angeles’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy reminded students that the university “will not release immigration status or related information in confidential student records … without a judicial warrant, a subpoena, a court order, or as otherwise required by law”.

“The university also has a strict policy that generally prevents campus police from undertaking joint efforts with federal immigration enforcement or detaining people at the federal government’s request,” CNN reported the centre as saying.

In October 2023, after the start of Israel-Hamas war sparked protests on US college campuses, Trump said at a campaign event that he would revoke student visas and deport “radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners” enrolled in universities. He criticised pro-Palestinian protests and said he would send Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to what he called “pro-jihadist demonstrations”.

Trump also vowed to reinstate and expand his previous travel ban on people from predominantly Muslim countries — which limited travellers from Iran, Libya, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. The Administration later extended the travel ban to include several African countries. President Joe Biden revoked the travel ban after he took office in 2021.