To attract the brightest minds to America, President Donald Trump proposed a novel idea while campaigning: If elected, he would grant green cards to all foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges.“It’s so sad when we lose people from Harvard, MIT, from the greatest schools,” Trump said during a podcast interview last June. “That is going to end on Day One.”That promise never came to pass. Trump’s stance on welcoming foreign students has shifted dramatically. International students have found themselves at the center of an escalating campaign to kick them out or keep them from coming as his administration merges a crackdown on immigration with an effort to reshape higher education.An avalanche of policies from the Trump administration—such as terminating students’ ability to study in the U.S., halting all new student visa interviews and moving to block foreign enrollment at Harvard—have triggered lawsuits, countersuits and confusion. Foreign students say they feel targeted on multiple fronts. Late Wednesday, Trump himself took the latest action against international students, signing an executive order barring nearly all foreigners from entering the country to attend Harvard.In interviews, students from around the world described how it feels to be an international student today in America. Their accounts highlight pervasive feelings of fear, anxiety and insecurity that have made them more cautious in their daily lives, distracted them from schoolwork and prompted many to cancel trips home because they fear not being allowed to return.For many, the last few months have forced them to rethink their dreams of building a life in America. A standout student from Latvia feels ‘expendable’ Markuss Saule, a freshman at Brigham Young University-Idaho, took a recent trip home to Latvia and spent the entire flight back to the U.S. in a state of panic.For hours, he scrubbed his phone, uninstalling all social media, deleting anything that touched on politics or could be construed as anti-Trump.“That whole 10-hour flight, where I was debating, ‘Will they let me in?’—it definitely killed me a little bit,” said Saule, a business analytics major. “It was terrifying.”Saule is the type of international student the U.S. has coveted. As a high schooler in Latvia, he qualified for a competitive, merit-based exchange program funded by the U.S. State Department. He spent a year of high school in Minnesota, falling in love with America and a classmate who is now his fiancee. He just ended his freshman year in college with a 4.0 GPA.But the alarm he felt on that flight crushed what was left of his American dream.“If you had asked me at the end of 2024 what my plans were, it was to get married, find a great job here in the U.S. and start a family,” said Saule, who hopes to work as a business data analyst. “Those plans are not applicable anymore. Ask me now, and the plan to leave this place as soon as possible.”Saule and his fiancee plan to marry this summer, graduate a year early and move to Europe.This spring the Trump administration abruptly revoked permission to study in the U.S. for thousands of international students before reversing itself. A federal judge has blocked further status terminations, but for many, the damage is done. Saule has a constant fear he could be next.As a student in Minnesota just three years ago, he felt like a proud ambassador for his country.“Now I feel a sense of inferiority. I feel that I am expendable, that I am purely an appendage that is maybe getting cut off soon,” he said. Trump’s policies carry a clear subtext. “The policies, what they tell me is simple. It is one word: Leave.” From dreaming of working at NASA to ‘doomscrolling’ job listings in India A concern for attracting the world’s top students was raised in the interview Trump gave last June on the podcast “All-In.” Can you promise, Trump was asked, to give companies more ability “to import the best and brightest” students?“I do promise,” Trump answered. Green cards, he said, would be handed out with diplomas to any foreign student who gets a college or graduate degree.Trump said he knew stories of “brilliant” graduates who wanted to stay in the U.S. to work but couldn’t. “They go back to India, they go back to China” and become multi-billionaires, employing thousands of people. “That is going to end on Day One.”Had Trump followed through with that pledge, a 24-year-old Indian physics major named Avi would not be afraid of losing everything he has worked toward.After six years in Arizona, where Avi attended college and is now working as an engineer, the U.S. feels like a second home. He dreams of working at NASA or in a national lab and staying in America where he has several relatives.But now he is too afraid to fly to Chicago to see them, rattled by news of foreigners being harassed at immigration centers and airports.“Do I risk seeing my family or risk deportation?” said Avi, who asked to be identified by his first nam