The Surveillance Groundwork

How post 9/11 immigration policy made way for today’s surveilling of international students. 

By Sayuri Govender 

Illustration by Em Bennet

Detentions of students for political dissent, the GOP’s encroachment into our classrooms, and an increase in ICE checkpoints around the city have created a fog of fear and suppression within and around our shut gates. The past few semesters at Columbia have been marked by pervasive government intervention that has censored and attacked our international students. Yet, this reality is not purely a result of the current Columbia administration and Trump administration, but a decades long legacy. 

In October of 2001, the 342 page US PATRIOT ACT was passed unanimously and speedily in response to the 9/11 attacks. Within one of its provisions, the Patriot Act modified the Family and Educational Rights Privacy Act, or FERPA, allowing previously private data to be readily accessed by federal law enforcement. Thus, this bill made way for the government to surveil U.S. citizens and migrants all under the guise of national security. Beyond Capitol Hill, the fallout of 9/11 led to surge in islamophobia across the country— the FBI reported that anti-Muslim hate crimes rose from 28 in 200o to 481 in 2001. By 2009, there was a 500% increase in hate crimes against Muslims since 2000. These horrific spikes in hate were exacerbated by rhetoric and policies that called for the hyper-surveillance of migrants from predominantly Muslim, Arab, and South Asian countries. 

Barnard Sociology Professor Randa Serhan, who teaches courses on surveillance and Arab history in NYC, explained how, even before it was publicly recognized, surveillance on a local scale was felt by the Palestinian communities she was researching in New York and New Jersey. She explained how surveillance was immediate in the aftermath of 9/11, and intensified as time went on, to a point where “not only were they convinced that they were under surveillance, they could actually identify who was surveilling them… it took years from their recognition of surveillance for there to be any kind of recognition at a global scale.” As Arab and Muslim communities were surveilled at deli counters, mosques, and other places of communing, federal law enforcement also dialed in to places of communal learning and education: college campuses. 

This immense surveillance extended onto Columbia’s campus. International students were required to submit personal information and academic records into a new database known as SEVIS, or the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System—a database maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. With the new weakened FERPA regulations, student data could be readily accessed by law enforcement without consent or notification. International students could be placed under intense, acute scrutiny—from their library book records to their academic coursework. This data could be accessed if the federal government flagged it as “under suspicion”—a vague term that was often weaponized against Muslim, Arab, and South Asian students. This clause within the Patriot Act has been permanent from its conception—unlike other “sunset clauses” that expired within a few years—making it so student data can always be accessible by vague and unjust means. 

Adjunct Professor Elizabeth OuYang, who teaches on post 9/11 immigration policy at Columbia’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity & Race, stated that, “there's a lot of personal information in SEVIS, but that's a condition of coming (to the US),” adding that, “[International students] are vulnerable in the sense that that information is available.” 

She also described how in the aftermath of 9/11, “[Immigration and Customs Enforcement] just began to have so-called voluntary interviews with Arab, Muslim, and South Asian students on campus,” with some being sent letters by ICE requesting special meetings. In 2002 and 2003, the INS Special Registration process began requiring all non-citizen males from a select list of 25 predominantly Muslim countries, aged 16 or older to specially register with designated immigration offices. This included numerous international students at Columbia, who scrambled to navigate this new, confusing bureaucratic process. OuYang reflected, “they understood that it wasn't required, but nobody felt like they couldn’t go.” 

At this point in time, the University had an uncertain role, not knowing if they could or should provide counsel or advice to students called in for special registration. They were wholly unprepared for the drastic measures being taken under the guise of national security that targeted international students from these specific countries. The program concluded with over 83,000 men registered with over 13,000 detained—with absolutely zero convictions of terrorism made. 

In a 2003 article in the Boston Review, sociologist and Columbia Provost Emeritus Jonathan R. Cole—whose research focuses on issues within higher education—expressed how the Patriot Act and intense scrutiny of universities amidst the brewing Iraq war had lasting ramifications on both the free speech of faculty and the access to education for international students. He cites Columbia, where many international students were suddenly barred entry from research labs that managed “special agents”—or chemicals that could be used for so-called bioterrorism—solely due to their country of origin. International students’ access to academic opportunities were based on racialized and arbitrary decisions. The harsh examination they faced demonstrated a large shift in the oversight of the government onto college campuses. 

At a local level, this scrutiny and surveillance of movement extended beyond the Patriot Act. In 2012 AP news broke that the New York City Police Department had been directly tracking the movements of Muslim students, specifically targeting Muslim student organizations since 2002. This religious profiling included the surveillance of Muslim student organizations at campuses across the northeast—beyond the jurisdiction of New York City. At Columbia, the NYPD tracked the Muslim Student Association website daily. Yet, after over a decade of surveilling Muslim community groups across the northeast, the NYPD found no evidence of terrorism or terrorist ideology. 

This invasion of privacy completely altered the way Muslim students communed on campus. In a 2022 interview with The Columbia Spectator, former president of the Columbia Muslim Students Association stated how “Many Muslims were driven underground or wanted to stay away from the MSA, because, at that point in time, it was seen as something that could potentially get you into trouble.” Years later, the repercussions of this surveillance are still rampant and disturbing. “There's no normalizing [surveillance],” Serhan asserted, “it’s in your face constantly.”

President Lee Bollinger, who stepped into the role of President a year after the passing of the Patriot Act, objected to the government monitoring, stating that “law enforcement officials should not be conducting such surveillance of a particular group of students or citizens without any cause to suspect criminal conduct.” At a subsequent town hall hosted by the MSA, Muslim students felt that the University had not done enough to condemn these actions as well as publicly support and advocate for Muslim students on campus. Students had hoped the university would stand up for them, call out the closely connected city officials, and demand the NYPD to “stop bullying our kids,” as stated by the Muslim religious life officer Kahlil Abdur-Rashid. Some Muslim students on campus described how the AP report added to a fear of being watched,which altered the way they participated in class and expressed their perspectives, as many feared being recorded or retaliated against. 

Columbia would come to implement their own methods of surveillance under former president Minouche Shafik and interim president Katrina Armstrong—from campus swipe access to the hiring of private security companies to patrol campus. These tactics of surveillance utilized a new method of targeting based on pro-Palestinian political ideology, with students being surveilled both on campus and online. It is crucial to note that Columbia does not aim to punish international students, but protesters. However, when protesters are also on visas and their statuses are made vulnerable by Columbia’s systems of punishment, the Trump administration may utilize it as an in to further its anti-immigrant agenda that seeks to falsely characterize and thus justify the removal of migrants from the U.S. 

In the Spring of 2024, students at Columbia would be hunted and targeted not just by the University, but by the Department of Homeland Security and ICE. This baseless watching and targeting of international students follows a long-standing practice of surveilling “persons of interests” from a racially and religiously profiled list of countries in the aftermath of 9/11. As expressed by Serhan, “the student visa system has always been one of reporting” citing how even small actions of changing your dorm must be reported to the government. She explained, “We just at moments become aware of it. But … the surveillance system has always been there because you're a foreign body that is easily traceable.”

In extreme cases, ICE has appeared at Columbia student dorms with no warning. After his unjust detention, Mahmoud Khalil directly exposed how he had pleaded for the universitu to protect and provide aid after plain-cloth ICE officials showed up unannounced at his Columbia housing, and Columbia ignored him. He cited how “Presidents [Minouche] Shafik, [Katrina] Armstrong, and Dean [Keren] Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the US government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns—based on racism and disinformation—to go unchecked.” 

As students see more and more stories like these, an atmosphere of tension permeates our classrooms. Serhan expresses how, in her courses, students seem less inclined to share their opinions and perspectives, citing how “they've seen other students get in trouble for less.” This is not the result of unreasonable paranoia, but of witnessing how  the surveilling of student voices has led to dire consequences. 

The unjust punitive action we see enacted by the Trump administration on Columbia property has built upon decades of spying and monitoring, xenophobia and islamophobia, and targeting and attacking. In the barrage to systemically ostracize and remove immigrants from our country, international students have the potential to fulfill the role of the scapegoat. Serhan exposes that “none of this is outside of the system we already have,” adding how “the mechanism to capture those international students [was] already there.” Though the current system is built upon the scaffolding of post 9/11 surveillance policies, the surveillance apparatus has been and is enlarging to a magnitude never seen before, placing our students more and more at risk. 

Thus, OuYang asserts how crucial it is that the University “keeps international students informed of any updates or policies that could impact them” as well as affirmatively providing information on what rights they have, such as hosting Know Your Rights clinics. It is not enough to merely condemn ICE on campus—there must be active efforts to deny their access and further support our students. 

Over 20 years ago, Provost Jonathan Cole asked “Are we prepared to relinquish personal privacy and academic freedom to secure some vaguely articulated increase in national security? What, in fact, is the threat to national security that is posed by students and faculty at our universities?” Today, these questions still stand. Yet it is complicated by the new actor of our current suppressive university administration—who has continuously been complacent in ICE showing up to campus dorms as well as deeply punitive against the targeted student protesters. 

As a slew of xenophobic policies has spread across the country, with the Trump administration increasing ICE detentions by 50% in less than a year, Columbia has failed to provide adequate institutional backing in the protection of international students. They have built upon this history. They have made the institution unrecognizable from where students once felt academic freedom. We must ask not only why our students have been unjustly painted as a “threat to national security,” but also how Columbia is complicit in building and fortifying that so-called threat. 

Today, it is not just a matter of the U.S. government digging into student movement and actions, but Columbia’s cooperation and integration of surveillance into our own system. The groundwork was laid over two decades ago with the passing of the Patriot Act, the creation of SEVIS, the unjust infiltration into Muslim student groups by the NYPD, and the continued surveillance of international students. This web of spying is a byproduct of a slew of  post 9/11 immigration policy and bolstering of the Department of Homeland Security—showing that the horror we are seeing today is not out of the ordinary, but a lineage of profiling our students.