They're in shock'

Indian students reeling at Trump's visa clampdown

- Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Aakash Hassan

For weeks, Subhash Devatwal's phone has not stopped ringing. Some of the calls have been from distressed students; at other times it is their panicked parents. But all of them have the same question: is their dream of studying in the US still possible?

Devatwal runs an education consultancy in Ahmedabad, the main city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It is one of thousands of such organisations that exist across the country, helping Indian students achieve what many consider to be the ultimate symbol of success: getting into an American university.

It has long been a booming business for Devatwal. Families in India will often invest their entire life savings to send their children to study in the US and last year there were more than 330,000 Indians enrolled at American universities, more than any other foreign nationality, overtaking Chinese students in numbers for the first time in years.

But this year the situation looks drastically different. As Donald Trump's administration has taken aim at international students—first implementing draconian screening measures over political views and then last week ordering all US embassies globally to indefinitely pause all student visa interviews—many Indian students and their families have been left in limbo.

Trump's unilateral decision to stop Harvard University from admitting international students, which was later blocked by the courts, also caused widespread panic and stoked fears that foreign students at other universities could get caught in the president's crosshairs.