An Ohio State University student has sued President Donald Trump and other Trump administration officials for pulling his F-1 visa after participating in pro-Palestinian protests last year.
Ahwar Sultan is joined by the Students for Justice in Palestine at Ohio State as a plaintiff in the lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
The suit said Sultan was identified in media reports as one of the nearly 40 people arrested on April 25, 2024 during a protest on Ohio State's South Oval against the war in Gaza.
It said that Sultan, who is from India, was told by the university in early April that the federal government had revoked his visa. That came a week after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on March 27 that the State Department had revoked the visas of about 300 foreign students.
The suit said the Trump administration's actions are part of a larger pattern of government repression of constitutionally protected speech and protest.
It said visa revocations effectively strip people of their ability to remain a student in the United States.
Rafael Urena, one of Sultan's lawyers, told WOSU the student is still at risk of being detained and deported. He said they seeking a preliminary and permanent injunction keeping the Trump administration from further immigration actions against Sultan.
"We are kind of operating in the dark. The government has been secretive as to the reason why these terminations have occurred," Urena said. "But what we do know is that there is a coincidence between the people who are having their status revoked and their participation in protests critical of the United States and Israeli government's actions in Palestine."
Before Wednesday it was unknown if any of the OSU international students who had their visas terminated had participated in protests against Israel's war in Gaza. Twelve international students at Ohio State have had their visas revoked as of Wednesday.
Sultan lives in Columbus and is a second-year graduate student in comparative studies at Ohio State and has been admitted to the PhD program in history of art.
Urena said Sultan is worried about what action the U.S. government might take against him. He said both OSU and Sultan are trying to figure out about this changing legal landscape about what is happening.
"Mr. Sultan is both terrified about the prospect of being arrested and deported and disappeared into one of our vast immigration detention system here in the United States. We've also seen other immigrants be deported to foreign prisons in El Salvador," Urena said. "There's a climate that the administration has created of terror and perpetrated and violence perpetrated on immigrants."
Also named as defendants in the suit are Rubio, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and acting U.S. director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons.
It also asks to reinstate Sultan's visa and to declare the Trump administration's orders unconstitutional under Sultan's First Amendment rights to free speech.
Sultan's other lawyer Jana Al-Akhras criticized the decision as an attack on free speech.
"You have every right to engage in this type of speech and to engage in this types of action. And the Trump administration, and further the policies that are perpetuated by Secretary Rubio are just in complete contradiction to the spirit of what this country stands for," Al-Akhras said.
The Associated Press reported that several international students have filed similar lawsuits. Their schools range from private universities like Harvard and Stanford to large public institutions like the University of Maryland to some small liberal arts colleges.
Ohio State President Ted Carter said in a statement on April 8 that the federal government did not formally notify university officials about the visa revocations, and did not give a reason why the students' visas were revoked.
Last week, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department said that because of privacy and other considerations and visa confidentiality, the department generally will not comment on actions with respect to specific cases.
OSU spokesman Ben Johnson declined to comment on Sultan's lawsuit on Wednesday.
Ohio State has said OSU is offering resources to these students including multiple offices across the university, including the Office of Academic Affairs, Legal Affairs, International Affairs, Student Life and Human Resources, coordinating to best assist each student and provide the full scale of resources available to them.
Student Legal Services is providing independent legal advice upon request.
Urena criticized the university's response to WOSU.
"(Carter's) actions seem to be only by words at this point," Urena.
Al-Akhras criticized Carter for making the names of the students public and offering them to media. The names would have become public record anyway since the students were charged with a crime after they were arrested by Ohio State University Police.
Al-Akhras also criticized Carter for saying "Ohio State will not be overtaken" by the protests.
