Washington — The Trump administration’s crackdown on students who participated in pro-Palestinian activities have raised questions about the First Amendment rights of visa and green card holders amid the shocking detentions of a number of students at Tufts, Columbia and other universities in recent weeks. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio cited a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act that authorizes the nation’s top diplomat to revoke the visas of foreign national students on the grounds that their presence or activities have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the U.S. 

The federal government is not required to lay out proof beyond that explanation, legal experts told CBS News, setting up a legal showdown over foreign nationals’ free speech rights in the U.S. 

“There’s a tension between everyone’s First Amendment rights to free speech and the immigration statute’s broad provisions giving the secretary of state broad latitude to declare someone deportable simply because he thinks that the student may have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences. And the courts will have to figure out where the appropriate line should be drawn,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a retired immigration law professor at Cornell University.

Rubio said Thursday the State Department has canceled more than 300 visas and that they’re “primarily” student visas. Several high-profile cases are related to students who led or participated in pro-Palestinian activities and disruptive protests, which the administration has equated to activity supporting Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group. 

He also told reporters that if the administration is compelled to provide evidence in court, it will, but said “judges don’t issue student visas. There’s no right to a student visa.”

“We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses.And if we’ve given you a visa, and then you decide to do that, we’re going to take it away,” Rubio said at a news conference in Guyana. 

In targeting students, the Trump administration is enforcing the statute differently than past administrations, according to immigration lawyer Jonathan Grode. 

“This administration hasn’t changed the law,” Grode said. “They’re just telling the referees to call the game differently. They’re saying, be stricter, use all the tools you have available to effectuate this behavior. That’s the big difference. That’s why it feels so jarring.” 

“With the Trump administration, they’re pushing this to such a degree that it’s creating concern, hysteria, reaction, litigation,” he added. 

A visa revocation does not automatically result in a person’s deportation, which is handled by the Department of Homeland Security and requires due process. Several of the students are sitting in detention facilities as the government seeks to deport them. 

Rubio’s remarks came in response to a question about Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, a Fulbright scholar and Turkish national who was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents wearing masks and in plain clothes in Massachusetts on Tuesday, March 25. 

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson alleged Wednesday that Ozturk had “engaged in activities in support of Hamas,” but did not provide details about her alleged activities. Ozturk’s friends have said she is being punished for co-authoring an opinion piece in the Tufts Daily campus newspaper in 2024, where she called on the school to divest from Israel and “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” but never mentioned Hamas.

The case followed another high-profile detention earlier this month of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University grad student who had been active in pro-Palestinian protests on campus last year. Khalil, who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, has a green card, or legal permanent residency, and his wife is an American citizen. Immigration authorities initially told Khalil that they were acting on a State Department order to revoke his student visa, but when they were informed that he had a green card, the agent said they were revoking that according to his attorney. 

Green cards, however, cannot be rescinded as simply as visas. The government suggested in a court filing earlier this week that it could move to revoke his status for allegedly omitting information on his immigration forms, including his involvement with the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, and a group known as Columbia University Apartheid Divest.  

But at the core of the U.S. government’s detention and aimed deportation of Khalil is a rarely used section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that subjects noncitizens to possible deportation if their presence and activities are deemed threatening to the foreign policy interests of the U.S.

This same law was used to detain Georgetown University researcher Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national who was taken into custody by masked agents March 17 in Virginia. The government cited his alleged “close connections” to a Hamas official as justification for revoking the visa, saying he was “actively spreading Hamas propaganda.”

The government using that law is also trying to deport Yunseo Chung, a 21-year-old Columbia University student and legal permanent resident who has been involved in pro-Palestinian protests. Chung came to the U.S. from South Korea with her family when she was 7. 

Yale-Loehr recalled two other cases where similar powers were invoked in deportation proceedings. In 1987, it was used in a case involving eight people who either held valid student visas or were lawful permanent residents for their pro-Palestinian activism. The deportation case dragged on for 20 years and ended with a judge calling the government’s actions “an embarrassment to the rule of law.” In the 1990s, the government tried to deport a former Mexican official who was in the U.S. on a visa and faced charges in his home country. The then secretary of state said his deportation was necessary for foreign policy matters. 

Attorneys in the recent cases have accused the Trump administration of using immigration enforcement to suppress speech it disagrees with. 

Grode said the crackdown could have a chilling effect on the First Amendment. The Trump administration, which ran on a free speech platform, is “creeping in on attacking some of the very fundamental principles that make America America,” he said. Still, noncitizens having First Amendment rights “doesn’t negate the ability of the government to revoke their visa,” he added.

Yale-Loehr expects it will take years for these cases to be settled, predicting that “it’s going to be a mess.” 

“If there’s over 300 students who had their visas revoked, there’s going to be a lot of cases challenging it,” he said. “I suspect that the litigation will take years to unravel before a court and get a definitive ruling on the extent to which foreign nationals have First Amendment rights.” 

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• U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
• Marco Rubio
• First Amendment
• Columbia University
• Trump Administration
• Tufts University

Four days after a massive earthquake toppled buildings across Myanmar, isolated stories were still emerging Monday of people being pulled alive from the rubble. The confirmed death toll reached at least 2,056, French news agency AFP cited the ruling military junta as saying, and was expected to rise. Getting help to those in need — and even assessing the extent of the destruction — was proving difficult in a country where key infrastructure was badly damaged and where a civil war had already been raging.

The occasional rescue may have helped to keep hope alive over the weekend, but they were the lucky ones. Building after building in Myanmar’s second largest city, Mandalay, and beyond lie in ruins on Monday. Damaged roads, bridges and downed powerlines have made it impossible for rescue teams to reach many communities in the impoverished nation that has been engulfed by war since the junta seized power in a coup four years ago.

Just hours after the big quake struck on Friday, there were reports the junta had carried out airstrikes in rebel-controlled areas that were impacted by the temblor, compounding the misery for survivors.

The junta has maintained its strict controls on foreign journalists entering Myanmar but has appealed for international aid. As of Monday, China, Russia and India had responded with humanitarian supplies and rescue and recovery teams on the ground, along with other regional neighbors.

President Trump said the U.S. would be helping, but while America has long played a leading role in international disaster relief, Mr. Trump has gutted foreign aid spending in the first couple months of his second term, including a virtual abolishment of the USAID agency. Programs that would typically have been galvanized to rush in American help could be far less able to provide assistance in the wake of the disaster still unfolding in Myanmar.

In neighboring Thailand, meanwhile, serious questions were emerging over the tragedy still playing out on a construction site in the capital city of Bangkok. A 30-story skyscraper that had been under construction was the only tower in the sprawling metropolis that completely failed to withstand Friday’s 7.7 magnitude earthquake and the ongoing aftershocks.

It was reduced to a mountain of rubble within seconds on Friday, killing at least 19 people and leaving 77 still missing as of Monday, after the volunteer rescue organization Fire and Rescue Thailand said another body was pulled from the debris.

Thai authorities have ordered an investigation into the isolated collapse to determine whether it could have been due to inadequate building materials, design flaws or a failure in the inspections and approvals process.

Bangkok Governor Chadchart Sittipunt visited the site Monday as heavy machinery pulled at the rubble in hopes of finding more survivors. He said all efforts were focused on finding anyone who might still be saved.

“Even one life saved is worth all the effort, so I think we have to move on, carry on,” he said.

But he made it clear that authorities were already thinking about how it could have happened and how to prevent it happening again.

“What’s important in the long-term and medium-term — I think we need to find the root cause so at least we can learn some lessons and improve building regulations,” Chadchart told journalists at the scene. “In the end, we will have some results that will improve safety in Bangkok.”

Thailand’s Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra was among those voicing concern over the weekend about why the skyscraper was the only one to suffer major damage.

“I have questions in my mind,” she said. “What happened from the beginning since it was designed? How was this design approved,” she said. “We have to investigate where the mistake happened.”

The leader confirmed an investigation into the incident, involving a group of experts tasked with providing initial findings within just days.

Some critics have speculated that the steel reinforcement bars used to connect concrete components within the structure may have been too thin, or of insufficient quality. Experts removed several steel rods from the rubble for testing on Monday.

On Sunday, AFP quoted Thai Industry Minister Akanat Promphan as saying six different types of steel, all from a single manufacturer, had been discovered at the scene.

“The collapse of a building can come from several factors, from design, construction (and) material specification,” Akanat said. “Most important is the standard of the materials.”

Akanat told reporters he’d “found something suspicious” already, but that he’d wait for test results to provide more information.

The project to build the new State Audit Building was a joint venture between a Bangkok-based property developer, the Italian-Thai Development company, and a Chinese state-owned firm, the China Railway No. 10 Engineering Group, which was carrying out much of the actual construction work.

On Sunday, Bangkok Metropolitan Police Major General Noppasin Poonsawat, the deputy commissioner of the force, was quoted by the Bangkok Post as saying officers had questioned four Chinese men who were found removing 32 files from containers behind the collapsed building. The men reportedly had work permits for the site and were employed by a company under the auspices of the Italian-Thai Development firm, Noppasin said.

Noppasin was quoted by the Post as saying the files contained documents with information about contractors and sub-contractors on the project, and that the police had seized the files and then released the Chinese men after questioning.

Thai Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters Sunday that he had ordered the establishment of an investigation committee and that he wanted results reported back to him within seven days.

“We will definitely find the true reasons as to why this building has collapsed, because it’s all scientific,” Anutin said.

Hope was fading fast Monday that any more construction workers could be pulled from the rubble alive, but crews using search dogs continued to retrieve the bodies of victims as families keep vigil near the site, refusing to lose hope.

• Thailand
• Building Collapse
• Rescue
• Myanmar
• Bangkok
• China
• Disaster
• Earthquake

Marine Le Pen, the figurehead of the ascendant far-right political movement in France, was hit with a non-custodial prison sentence and barred from running in elections for five years on Monday as a court found her guilty of embezzling European Union funds to pay members of her National Rally party’s staff.

In handing down the sentence, the judge said the public office ban would take effect immediately and she will not be able to appeal, which means Le Pen will not be able to run for the French president in 2027 barring some unforeseen legal twist.

“The court took into consideration, in addition to the risk of reoffending, the major disturbance of public order if a person already convicted… was a candidate in the presidential election,” said judge Benedicte de Perthuis, according to the AFP news agency.

Recent polling has shown she is likely to have won at least a first round in that national election. 

Le Pen, 56, garnered 41% of the ballots in the last French presidential election in 2022, and has made no secret of her desire to run again for the nation’s highest office.

Sat in the front row of the Paris court, Le Pen whispered “incredible” as the judge detailed his reasoning for the guilty verdict. She walked out of the court before the sentences were even announced.

Le Pen, along with eight current or former party members, had faced up to 10 years in prison on the embezzlement charges. The court said the four-year sentence handed down on Monday would be served with the politician wearing an ankle bracelet to track her movements, not in prison.

She had described the possibility of a ban from running for the presidency in 2027 as a “political death” sentence.

• Election
• Marine Le Pen
• France
• European Union

Japanese restaurant chain Sukiya will temporarily shut nearly all of its roughly 2,000 branches after a rat was found in a miso soup and a bug in another meal, the company said Saturday.

Sukiya, famous for its beef bowls, apologized in a statement saying a bug contamination at one of its Tokyo restaurants on Friday, two months after the rat incident at another branch.

“Sukiya has decided to temporarily close all restaurants, with the exception of some stores in shopping centers, from March 31 to April 4 in order to take measures against pests and vermin,” it said.

Sukiya said measures had been taken to address cracks in the affected branch that could lead to contamination, the BBC reported.

The fast-food company has about 1,970 stores across Japan.

The Nikkei business daily reported that its stores in shopping centers will also be closed as soon as arrangements are made with the facilities.

Food recalls are rare in Japan, a country with famously high sanitation standards, but food poisoning and recall incidents occasionally make headlines.

Last year, more than 100,000 packets of sliced bread were recalled after parts of a rat were discovered inside two bags.

Sukiya is part of Zensho Holdings, which owns a number of restaurant chains in Japan, according to the BBC. Last Monday, following the disclosure about the rat, Zensho’s share price tumbled before recovering later in the week. 

• Rat
• Japan

Officers recently confiscated nearly 6.5 tons of cocaine from a semi-submersible vessel, or so-called “narco sub,” intercepted off the Azores while bound for the Iberian peninsula, Portugal’s judicial police said.

The bust, dubbed Operation Nautilus, amounts to nearly a quarter of the record 23 tons seized across the whole of 2024 in Portugal, often considered one of the first points of entry for the drug into Europe. Drug traffickers have been caught using semi-submersible vessels to smuggle cocaine while attempting to evade detection.

The vessel was intercepted “in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, around 500 nautical miles” south of Portugal’s Azores archipelago, the judicial police statement said.

Five crew members were onboard the vessel, which was used by an international crime ring, the statement added.  Police released video of the operation, showing the vessel loaded with orange packages as well as four suspects with their faces blurred out.

Besides the Portuguese navy and air force, international partners including the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the British National Crime Agency and the Spanish Guardia Civil contributed to the bust, according the police.

Portuguese police said that the operation happened recently, without specifying the date.

Many “narco subs” cannot fully dive like a true submarine, but some are able to dip completely underwater.

Most of the cocaine smuggled into Portugal comes across the sea from Latin America.

Though most commonly seen off the coast of Colombia, “narco subs” have been spotted across the globe in recent months. 

In January, a “narco sub” broke in two pieces as a fishing boat was towing it to a port in northwestern Spain. In November, the Mexican Navy said it seized about 8,000 pounds of cocaine aboard a “narco sub” about 150 miles off the resort of Acapulco.  In September, the U.S. Coast Guard said that it had offloaded more than $54 million worth of cocaine  — including over 1,200 pounds of drugs that were seized from a “narco sub.”

• Portugal
• Submarine
• Cocaine
• Drug Enforcement Administration

Vilnius, Lithuania — A U.S. armored vehicle that went missing in Lithuania has been retrieved from a swamp after a six-day search but there is still no information about the fate of the four American soldiers who were inside, Lithuanian officials said Monday.

“The armored vehicle was pulled ashore at 4:40 a.m., the towing operation is complete, Lithuanian Military Police and US investigators continue their work,” Defense Minister Dovilė Šakalienė said Monday morning in a post on Facebook.

The soldiers were on a training exercise at the massive General Silvestras Žukauskas training ground in the town of Pabradė when they and their vehicle were reported missing in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the U.S. army said.

“Until the investigators have more details, we need to stay calm and focused, and keep in mind the sensitivity of the situation and the concerns of the soldiers’ families,” Šakalienė posted on Facebook.

She made clear to reporters that the first information about fate of the soldiers will be delivered by the U.S. army.

The soldiers, all from 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, were conducting tactical training when they went missing.

Hundreds of Lithuanian and U.S. soldiers and rescuers took part in the search through the thick forests and swampy terrain around Pabradė, which lies just 6 miles west of the border with Belarus. The M88 Hercules armored vehicle was discovered on Wednesday submerged in 15 feet of water.

A large-scale recovery operation got underway but “water, thick mud and soft ground around the site have complicated recovery efforts and have required specialized equipment to drain water from the side and stabilize the ground” in order to pull the 70-ton vehicle ashore, the army said.

The U.S. Army Europe and Africa’s public affairs office said in a statement Friday that a “large capacity slurry pump, cranes, more than 30 tons of gravel, and subject matter experts from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are just some of the assets that arrived on site to assist with accessing the M88.”

“This will be a long and difficult … operation, but we are absolutely committed to bringing our soldiers home,” Curtis Taylor, Commanding General of the 1st Armored Division said in Friday’s statement.

Lithuania, a NATO and EU member, hosts more than 1,000 American troops stationed on a rotational basis. 

• Lithuania