Texas Schools Urge Int’l Students To Return To US Before Trump Inauguration

Ahead of President-Elect Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, several Texas universities are urging international students to return from holiday travels early, the Houston Chronicle reported on Tuesday.

A travel advisory for the University of Texas at San Antonio “strongly recommends” that international students return to the U.S. by Jan. 17 “due to immigration-related uncertainties.”  

“With the upcoming change in government and the uncertainty surrounding potential immigration policy changes, the safest way to avoid difficulty re-entering the United States is to be physically present before the new administration takes office,” the university wrote in a Nov. 1 announcement. “We are recommending January 17 in case of unexpected travel delays which could delay your expected return.”

The University of Houston and the University of Texas at Dallas also reportedly recommended that international students return early in the semester, joining colleges and universities across the country.

The UT San Antonio advisory nods to the chaos that followed Trump’s executive order ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries that left many travelers stranded less than a month into his first term.

Other universities across the U.S. have been less subtle in their advisories. Cornell University’s Nov. 26 international services advisory suggests that “a travel ban is likely to go into effect soon after inauguration, … likely to include citizens of the countries targeted in the first Trump administration,” and warns that “new countries could be added to this list, particularly China and India.”

Texas has among the highest international student enrollment populations of any U.S. state, NPR reported in November.

And international students can make up a huge share of a school’s population. Rice University hosts 2,275 international students, who make up 41% of the school’s graduate student body and 13% of its undergraduate body, according to the Chronicle’s reporting.