'I only have a semester left': Carnegie Mellon student among those whose visas were terminated
Jayson Ma received the same email as everyone else at Carnegie Mellon University on Monday afternoon.
The message, sent by the provost, announced the federal government had terminated the visas for two of Carnegie Mellon’s current international students, making them ineligible to continue studying in the United States.
“I was looking at it, and I’m like, ‘Shoot, is this for me?’ ” Ma said Wednesday.
A day later, through a phone call with a university official, he learned it was.
Ma, who came to the United States from China in 2016, isn’t sure what will happen to him next.
“I was really just worried about my school because I’m so close from finishing up,” he said. “I only have a semester left, and there’s only three weeks left for this semester. We have finals coming up.”
The information was hard to process, Ma said. Still, he went to his three-hour lab Tuesday night.
Then he went home and packed up his house and cleaned his cats’ litter box — just in case.
“I’m ready to leave if I have to,” he said.
Ma, 24, initially came to the United States for high school. In 2020, he was accepted at Carnegie Mellon to study electrical computer engineering with a concentration in signals and systems.
He is scheduled to graduate in December but now fears that will not likely happen.
He is one of many international students across the country who have been targeted by the Trump administration in recent weeks. A federal lawsuit on the issue was filed Monday in Pittsburgh.
Several schools in Pennsylvania, including Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh, Penn State and the University of Pennsylvania, have been impacted. On Wednesday, Pitt confirmed one graduate student and two who recently graduated had their status terminated.
Immigration attorneys have said the students being targeted have had a run-in with the law — with some as minor as traffic infractions. In other cases, the criminal charges were withdrawn or dismissed.
Ma, his attorney said, had a DUI in 2023 for which he completed Allegheny County’s Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program. The program, if completed successfully, allows for the charges to be dismissed and expunged from a person’s record. That is what happened in Ma’s case, said attorney Walt Nalducci, who represented him in the case.
Ma does not know for sure the DUI is the reason he’s being targeted. He has not received any official notice from the Department of Homeland Security. Instead, the only information he has received is from Carnegie Mellon.
“I don’t really exactly know why it was terminated, and it wasn’t explained to me,” Ma said.
On Wednesday, Ma met with reporters at the Downtown Pittsburgh office of his immigration attorney, Joseph Murphy.
Unlike other international students who have become targets of the Trump administration for attending pro-Palestinian rallies on other campuses, Ma said he has been especially careful not to express his political feelings.
“I want to keep my personal opinion separate from my education here within the U.S. That’s, once again, what I’m here for, right? I want to finish my degree, I want to finish my school and I want to do what’s right,” he said. “I don’t want to break any more rules.”
Under his Student and Exchange Visitor Information System program status originally, Ma was permitted to remain a student in the U.S. until spring 2026. However, he said, he has accelerated his studies.
“My mom’s really sick, so I’m trying to graduate as early as I can to go home and visit her,” he said. “She’s saying, ‘I’d rather you not ever see me again but finish school.’ And that’s how much Chinese parents care about education.”
Ma’s mother has breast cancer and is terminally ill.
Carnegie Mellon officials have been supportive and encouraging, he said.
“They’re working with me, to help me to the best extent that they can, to finish my school this semester and maybe potentially get a degree remotely,” he said. “But it’s really complicated.”
It is especially difficult, Murphy said, because there have not been any formal reasons announced for what’s happening or why.
“No notice, no hearing, no opportunity to speak up for yourself,” Murphy said.
“I think, at the very least, they should have to tell me, ‘You have to leave,’ ” Ma said.
Right now, Ma is waiting to see if he receives an official letter from the government that his SEVIS program status has been terminated. At that point, Murphy said, he will likely have to leave the country.
Once Ma has been ordered to leave, Murphy said, the timing becomes important. If he accrues 180 days in the country illegally, the lawyer said, Ma could be subject to a three-year ban from the United States. With 365 days, Murphy said, it becomes a 10-year ban.
Ma said he loves Pittsburgh.
“It hasn’t been an easy journey,” he said, “but I’m proud of everything I’ve accomplished.