College newspapers under pressure as immigration fears silence sources

International students have asked to remain anonymous in college newspaper articles examining White House policies, to nix their names from old stories and — if they’re reporters or editors themselves — to step away from covering protests of Israel’s war in Gaza or President Donald Trump altogether, according to student journalists across the country.

The pattern reflects an atmosphere of fear on campuses as the Trump administration has promised to identify international students and deport them over anti-Israel protests that the White House alleges support Hamas’s goals, college newspaper editors at Stanford University, Arizona State and Northeastern University told The Washington Post.

Requests to take down articles and anonymize sources became more prevalent after the March arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student who participated in pro-Palestinian protests, according to student media advocacy groups. Students were further rattled when Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk was detained and accused of supporting terrorists because of a March 2024 op-ed she co-wrote criticizing the university’s response to the pro-Palestinian movement.

At Stanford in Northern California, Greta Reich noticed what she called a “chilling effect” seize the normally vocal student body.

Students became more reluctant to give interviews to the Stanford Daily, the institution’s independent student-run newspaper, or contribute to its opinion section, said Reich, a junior and the Daily’s editor-in-chief.

A handful of international students who are also Daily staff members stepped away from articles that touched on topics related to Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and “anything really about the Trump administration,” said Reich.

Those students, Reich added, were primarily concerned their bylines would attract unwelcome attention from a White House that has vowed to crack down on alleged antisemitism using a broad interpretation of the word that critics say chills legitimate criticism of Israel.

The worries led Reich and her team to grapple with how they would continue to cover their community while safeguarding sources, who are also the same classmates they dine with, live in dorms with and see on campus daily.

“When there’s an entire portion of our population that doesn’t want to talk to us and doesn’t want to have their story told, we want to [find ways to] protect them and respect their wishes,” Reich said. Otherwise, “that’s a whole section of campus that doesn’t get to be heard.”

To make sure they could continue using international students as sources, student media are revisiting their policies to grant more anonymity or following through with takedown requests when there’s a tangible threat, said Dominic Coletti, a program officer for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

In recent weeks, leadership at the Stanford Daily and Northeastern’s Huntington News published letters from editors reaffirming their commitment to protecting students who take critical stances of the federal government.

Much of the concern comes from international students and other non-U. S. citizens who are worried that speaking out on hot-button issues could lead to their deportation. Ozturk’s case at Tufts University particularly sent a “warning bell” to students that even if they were not front-facing protesters, they could still be targeted for their speech, according to Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center.

“It’s no longer speculative,” Hiestand said. “And yes, student media are aware and reacting to that.”

At the height of last year’s pro-Palestinian protests on campus, it was not uncommon for student newspapers to grant anonymity to sources who feared speaking publicly could invite academic sanctions or jeopardize their job prospects. But with the new administration, conversations around anonymity have dramatically shifted as students specifically cite visa revocations, deportation or a fear of unknown consequences that could come from speaking out, according to Emily Spatz, the editor-in-chief of the Huntington News.

Similar to the Stanford Daily, the News has been asked to take down six op-eds critical of Trump and not share names of international students who speak to them on Trump-related issues. Spatz said students are also more worried about how they’re visually identified in stories.

For a story that covered how international students were afraid to travel home for the summer, Spatz said the back of sources’ heads were photographed so they would not be recognizable. All international students quoted in the article were anonymous, too, she said.

Spatz said the foreign perspective is especially necessary at Northeastern, where international students made up 38% of the population in 2024, according to the Boston Globe. During the 2023-2024 school year, there were about 1.1 million international students attending schools in the United States, according to federal data.

“Most of the criticism we’ve heard is that Northeastern should be doing more to stand up to Trump or to protect international students,” Spatz said, but getting that criticism on the record has been difficult. “It just carries more weight if that input is coming from international students who know what it’s like to be in the situation and what kind of support they need from the school right now.”

Katrina Michalak and Matthew Marengo — editors at Arizona State University’s independent, student-operated publication the State Press — said they’ve felt the apprehension, too. Michalak, the newly minted executive editor of her newsroom, said she plans to prioritize minimizing harm to those who are covered in the paper.

“There may be some people who, you know, may not want to talk to us with everything going on, but there’s also just as many people who are emboldened by this and want to have their voice heard,” said Marengo, the multimedia director at the State Press.

“And in a time when there’s so many people who are scared to have their voices heard,” he added, “I think it’s even more important for us to give a voice to the voiceless.”