Why US universities want foreign students to return before Trump takes charge in January

US President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to carry out the ‘largest mass deportation programme in history’ after returning to power. The University of Massachusetts Amherst last week in a travel advisory to its international students and faculty called on them to “strongly consider” returning to the US prior to the inauguration, as per Huffington Post. “Given that a new presidential administration can enact new policies on their first day in office, and based on previous experience with travel bans that were enacted in the first Trump Administration in 2016, the Office of Global Affairs is making this advisory out of an abundance of caution to hopefully prevent any possible travel disruption to members of our international community,” the UMass office said in a statement. “A lot of students have concerns about their visas and whether they’ll be allowed to continue their education.” Aoi Maeda, an international student from Japan at Earlham College in Indiana, told BBC, “I am planning to graduate in May 2026, but now that the administration is going to be a little bit more dangerous, I’m less hopeful about things going well,” she said. “I feel like us international students with a visa might get affected, and it’ll become easier to deport us.” With inputs from agencies