A group of students gathered to protest against Central Michigan University’s treatment of international students outside of the Bovee University Center on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2026.
This protest was largely inspired by the visas of seven of CMU’s former international students being revoked in April of 2025. This has been followed by a period of declining enrollment for international students at CMU.
The protest was organized by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which is an action-based student activist organization who fights for progressive policies on CMU’s campus.
“We want to highlight CMU’s complicity with Trump’s attacks on international students,” Celia Erikson, president of the SDS, said. “We wanted to point out the differences in how CMU likes to claim they treat international students and the realities of that.”
Erikson said that while CMU used to boast that there was a high amount of international students, it has been acknowledged that international enrollment has played a large part in enrollment decline.
International student enrollment has decreased by 455 students from fall of 2024 to fall of 2025 according to the CMU Fall End of Semester Enrollment numbers.
As previously the university immediately contacted the impacted international students and gave advice on next steps after their visas were revoked, but students, such as Erikson, felt more could have been done
The federal government is the entity which has been removing student visas. CMU has no authority over a student’s visa status, and is unable to provide legal guidance or service to affected students.
“We’re just asking for policies to help protect students who pay to be here,” said CMU junior Reid Geyer. “We pay the university to give us an education, we pay them to protect us and they’re not doing that.”
He said that the SDS has been pushing the Board of Trustees to make CMU a sanctuary campus since fall of 2025, but no changes have been made since then. He said this was their first protest reasserting their demands for a sanctuary campus.
The increasing amount of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations across the country has made students uneasy, particularly with international students.
The SDS will be meeting with the Board of Trustees in November to formally sit down with their revised demands, which will have an emphasis on protections for international students.
Outside of the protest, members of the SDS are also encouraging students who want to help their cause to get involved.
“Speak out, you know, in everyday life,” Geyer said. “You’re not going to get a big hero moment where you save somebody or like you do the right thing. It’s everyday actions, just little ways that you help support people and encourage others to take care of people or to do the right thing.”
He encouraged students to show up for international students and make CMU a welcoming environment for them, and to listen to their stories without judgement.
“I really would suggest joining us in Students for a Democratic Society because we have this campaign to pressure our administration to really implement protections for international students to protect their rights to an education here,” said Erikson. “The more people that we have fighting for this campaign and pressuring our administration, the easier it is to win these battles.”
