COLUMBIA — "Several" international students studying at the University of South Carolina have had their U.S. visas terminated by the federal government, according to university spokesman Jeff Stensland. 

The revocations come as colleges and universities across the country have reported similar terminations, the Associated Press reported, including at Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, UCLA and Ohio State University.

USC has been in contact with the students with revoked visas, Stensland said. University officials have not been given a specific reason for the revocations, which they learned about through a database maintained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 

Stensland did not provide further details about the situation, citing student privacy rules. 

The U.S. Department of State, which is responsible for issuing and revoking student visas, did not respond to an inquiry about the USC terminations. Spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters in Washington April 8 that the department wouldn't give out statistics about revocations or explain publicly why specific visas were being ended.

"The department revokes visas every day in order to secure our borders and to keep our community safe, and will continue to do so," she said. 

Some other colleges across the country reporting revocations have said they don't know why legitimate student visas were ended, according to the AP, though federal officials sometimes have cited infractions such as traffic violations. 

A few high-profile detentions of students on other campuses have focused on participants in pro-Palestinian protests, such as that of Mahmoud Khalil, an activist leader at Columbia University detained despite being a permanent resident. USC's campus was host to only a handful of such protests, and while two students were arrested in April 2024 following one of those demonstrations, the charges were later dropped and both students had home addresses in the United States.

Student visas are overseen by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. An ICE spokesman did not comment on the South Carolina visa revocations.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said March 28 that officials had revoked at least 300 visas because of protest activity or "potential criminal activity."

In the past, students whose visas were revoked, which mostly happened due to alcohol-related violations, were still able to continue their studies in the country, according to South Carolina immigration attorney Lawrence Needle. They would need to reapply for a new visa if they left the country and wanted to return.

But the recent wave of revocations has stripped young scholars of their student status in the Homeland Security system that tracks visa holders as they study at U.S. schools, Needle said.

Stensland did not specify if the USC students had lost that status. 

Without it, students face removal from the country. They can seek reinstatement, Needle said, but that's made more difficult because federal authorities haven't provided a reason for the terminations. 

"I am sure the purpose of terminating their status is to get these students to self-deport, is to get them to leave voluntarily," he said. 

Legal challenges from international scholars whose student status was ended have been filed in several states, including a class action lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania. A federal judge in New Hampshire said April 9 that she would grant an order temporarily blocking the deportation of a Chinese doctoral student at Dartmouth College who was studying computer science before his student status was terminated, The Boston Globe reported.