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Hassan Kamal Wattoo, 25, had received threatening calls for months from Pakistani authorities angry about critical articles he wrote. When he earned a scholarship to study law at the University of California, Berkeley, he jumped at the opportunity to leave Pakistan, and thought he might work in the United States after that.
Then came the detentions in the United States of noncitizen students for participating in pro-Palestinian protests, the arrest of a woman who had criticized Israel’s war in Gaza, the cancellations of hundreds of student visas with little or no explanation and what many have described as an assault by the Trump administration on science and academia.
Now, Mr. Wattoo said, he plans to return to Pakistan next week, after he receives his degree. His parents, worried about being harassed at the border, decided against traveling to Berkeley to attend his graduation on Friday, he said.
“That respect in the American system has kind of faded away and been replaced with this bitter animosity,” Mr. Wattoo said. He described the Trump administration’s tactics as “shockingly similar to what I’ve seen all my life and what I wanted to run away from.”
The New York Times asked international students at U.S. colleges and universities to share how the administration’s immigration policies had affected them, and 150 readers responded. The Times interviewed 20 of them, many from countries where the State Department has said that free speech is restricted.
Some said they had canceled spring break or summer travel plans over fears that they might not be allowed back into the United States. Others said they now avoid speaking in public about divisive issues or participating in protests that they think could attract the attention of the authorities, such as those in support of Palestinians, labor rights or disability rights.
