ICE impacts on colleges, students
Initial reports indicate fewer international students will return for the spring semester after the federal Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota.
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Corpus Christi educational institutions saw a decline in international and immigrant students in the fall of 2025.The drop coincides with Trump administration policies affecting immigration, visas and travel.The decline in international students impacts university budgets, local economies and research capabilities.
Corpus Christi’s classrooms and lecture halls welcomed fewer international students and immigrants this past fall compared to previous years.
President Donald Trump’s administration has enacted numerous policies affecting immigrants and international students.
The federal government has delayed visa processing and created travel restrictions. Last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement terminated the legal status of thousands of foreign students across the country, including about a dozen in the Coastal Bend.
The administration also halted refugee resettlement, restricted access to asylum and slowed down pathways for lawful permanent residence, temporary visas and citizenship.
Arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants have also been heavily publicized during the Trump administration and have spurred undocumented immigrants to leave the U.S. voluntarily before being targeted.
Amidst all of this, educational institutions including Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and the Corpus Christi Independent School District reported fewer international and immigrant students this fall.
International students
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi had only 386 international students enrolled this fall, compared to 592 in fall 2024. That’s a nearly 35% decrease in just one year, reversing a previous trend of growth.
The vast majority of the university’s international students over the past five years have come from India, including 406 in fall 2024 and just 209 in fall 2025.
“While undergraduate international enrollment at TAMU-CC has remained relatively steady, the decrease has been concentrated at the graduate level,” according to a brief statement from the university that also notes that the university’s international student decline is consistent with national trends.
This gap in graduate students included 45 fewer out-of-state graduate students and 11 fewer Texas graduate students.
Across the U.S., colleges and universities saw a 12% decline in international graduate student enrollments despite an overall surge in graduate students, according to the Institute of International Education.
The report states that colleges and universities that reported declines in new enrollments cited visa application concerns and travel restrictions.
At Texas A&M University-Kingsville, 419 international students came from India alone to study in fall 2024. That demographic dropped to just 189 for fall 2025, according to university data.
Del Mar College, the other major educational institution in Corpus Christi, primarily serves local students. Only about 2% of Del Mar College applicants come from outside the state of Texas, including other U.S. states and other countries, according to information shared by the college.
The college said that fewer than 10 students are currently enrolled as international students, though it estimates that a little over 100 students hold immigrant status, including potentially individuals who came to the U.S. as children.
Immigrant students in K-12 schools
Corpus Christi ISD also counted fewer immigrant students in fall 2025.
During the 2024-25 school year, the district counted 390 immigrant students, according to the district’s annual performance report. The district currently has just under 280 immigrant students, according to a Feb. 24 response to a public records request submitted by the Caller-Times.
In Corpus Christi ISD, this change has been noticed in the bilingual program.
Bilingual students and immigrant students are not identical student groups, but there is some overlap.
In Texas education data, “immigrant” refers to individuals aged 3-21 who were not born in any U.S. state (or Puerto Rico or the District of Columbia) and have not been attending one or more schools in any one or more states for more than three full academic years. This descriptor wouldn’t apply to students who are the children of immigrants or with international family ties.
“Emergent bilingual students” and “English learners” are students whose primary language is not English and who are in the process of acquiring English.
During a Dec. 4 meeting at Travis Elementary School, Sandra Clement, deputy superintendent for curriculum and instruction for the district, said that children aren’t being born in older neighborhoods and that families are moving. The event was part of a series of public information meetings at schools that the district plans to close before next school year.
“I’ll be honest with you, we had a lot of the emergent bilingual students who went back to their home country,” Clement said.
Clement and other district staff have shared this same observation several times during the 2025-26 school year, with estimates for students moving outside of the U.S. or Texas ranging in the hundreds.
Bilingual student enrollment dropped from 3,053 in 2024-25 to 2,951 this year, said Amanda Cameron, CCISD senior director for state and federal programs, during a school board presentation in January. Cameron attributed the drop not only to students gaining enough English skills to reclassify as English proficient, but also to “students who moved back to their home countries this summer.”
Clement shared in an email with the Caller-Times that while some previously enrolled bilingual students left before the school year began, other new bilingual students were identified. Without the loss of the former students, the district would have had a higher bilingual enrollment.
But how does the district know that some students left the country or state?
It asked families.
Principals visit with families when they withdraw students from school. If a student is enrolled at a school one year but doesn’t come back the next, Texas public schools are required to attempt to find out where they went. In Corpus Christi ISD, this is accomplished through an annual phone bank and outreach effort, Operation K.E.Y.S.
“Returned to home country” is one of the potential reasons for a student leaving school that the state requires districts to track. It takes time to compile this data, so the most recent official data is from 2022-23. At that time, 29 of Corpus Christi ISD’s leavers reported that they returned to their home country.
The district doesn’t formally report which countries immigrant students come from or the specific reasons families aren’t here anymore.
Texas does not allow schools to ask about a child’s immigration or status.
What impact do international students and immigrants have on the community?
International students studying in the U.S. contribute billions of dollars and support hundreds of thousands of jobs to the U.S. economy, according to reports from NAFSA Association of International Educators.
Within K-12 public schools in Texas, funding is tied to student counts. Fewer students means fewer dollars in the budget to pay teachers and staff, support programs and address maintenance and facilities.
The potential immigrant and bilingual student losses at Corpus Christi ISD are only a small piece of the district’s broader enrollment struggles that have persisted since the COVID-19 pandemic, but they do have an impact on the district’s already tight budget.
When international students come to town, they spend money locally, World Affairs Council of South Texas President and CEO Anantha Babbili said.
Before his retirement, Babbili was the provost and vice president of academic affairs at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. Earlier in his career, he was a professor at Texas Christian University and a dean at Middle Tennessee State University.
Babbili is currently a member of the Del Mar College Board of Regents, but he said that his statements to the Caller-Times were not a reflection of Del Mar College and were instead based on his career in higher education.
As the U.S. has shifted immigration policy, families across the globe have been watching, Babbili said.
Babbili said that he often travels to India, where he helps advise higher education institutions. The parents and prospective students he’s met there recently are no longer interested in the U.S. as they were before.
“We lost the traffic which was headed to the U.S.,” Babbili said, adding that students are now more interested in Germany and the European Union, New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
Babbili himself first came to the U.S. as an international student before building his career, marrying and starting a family and earning U.S. citizenship.
It can be expensive to send a student to study abroad, and as the pathways to employment, residency or citizenship in the U.S. appear shakier, international students are concerned it isn’t worth the risk, Babbili said.
At the same time, potential students have seen media reports about international students being sent back to their home countries because of minor offenses such as traffic violations or for participating in protests.
“There’s a lot of fear I see when I meet prospective parents who used to ask me about sending their son or daughter to the U.S.,” he said.
International students typically pay higher tuition than Texas residents. At least one Texas university, the University of North Texas, has already pointed to the drop in international students as contributing to a budget shortfall, according to reporting from the Texas Tribune.
Many international students are studying at the graduate level. At entities like A&M-Corpus Christi, local students haven’t filled in the gaps, according to fall 2025 data.
When graduate enrollments drop, this can have an impact on class sizes, faculty and the ability of institutions to secure research grants.
Universities serve as economic engines for the communities where they are based, Babbili said, and international students support not only the universities, but also the broader community.
International students live in apartments, buy groceries and shop at stores and restaurants. They often buy cars, either new or used, he said.
And while they’re here, their presence on campus provides cultural exchange opportunities for American classmates and peers.
The U.S. needs this knowledge of other cultures and languages for global exchange, he said, pointing to entities like the Port of Corpus Christi, which exports and imports from all around the world.
“In the long run, (the loss of international students), it’s going to affect how America deals with the rest of the world,” Babbili said.
Olivia Garrett reports on education and community news in South Texas. Contact her at olivia.garrett@caller.com. You can support local journalism with a subscription to the Caller-Times.