It took Ehsan Rajabi a few minutes to fully comprehend what was happening to him.

He and his wife were at the American border by Buffalo, New York, driving home to Baltimore after visiting his brother in Toronto. Rajabi, an Iranian graduate student studying art history at the Johns Hopkins University, presented all of his papers to border officials, including his student visa and his visitor visa for his Canadian vacation.

But the officers, Rajabi said, searched his car and phone, and interrogated him for hours. Then it happened: One of them took a bright red marker and drew a big diagonal cancellation line on his student visa.

“My wife started crying, and I was just begging them not to cancel our visas,” Rajabi said.

Rajabi and his wife have now been stranded in Canada for three months. They’re spending thousands of dollars on rent for a Baltimore apartment, living expenses in Toronto and consultations with immigration attorneys. On top of that, Rajabi said, Johns Hopkins isn’t paying him his graduate stipend because he had to take a leave of absence from his studies, and neither he nor his wife can earn an income while living in Canada on visitor visas.

Returning to Iran is a last resort, Rajabi said; it could make getting a new visa even harder.

Hopkins has so far declined to contact elected officials on his behalf or provide monetary support for legal representation, Rajabi said.

There isn’t much university officials can say about the issue, according to Hopkins spokesperson Doug Donovan. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act generally prohibits schools from sharing student records.

Donovan said that visa applications, denials and cancellations are at the “sole discretion” of the federal government, rendering Hopkins helpless.

“Universities do not have the legal right to intervene in the process or the standing to change or accelerate government decisions,” Donovan said.

Though other Maryland colleges sued the federal government this spring when it revoked student visas en masse, Hopkins stayed out of the fight.

The university has been warning international students to be careful about leaving the country since last fall. President Donald Trump followed through on a campaign promise to reinstate a travel ban he enacted in 2017, which includes people from Iran.

“If you cannot afford an interruption in your studies, research, employment or teaching due to an indefinite period abroad, you should carefully consider the need to travel outside the U.S.,” Hopkins’ Office of International Services warns on its website.

Rajabi and his wife did not heed that advice. They arrived in Canada on Aug. 18 with two multiple-entry visas, which allow the holders to enter the country many times before an expiration date. Their visas were supposed to be good until April.

Rajabi acknowledged that he and his wife “could have been more cautious and accept our share of responsibility.”

They decided to make the trip because Rajabi wanted to see his brother for the first time in two years, and the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto is dedicated to Islamic art, which he studies. He said they felt comfortable traveling because they had all the right paperwork.

That is, until they reached the U.S. border on Aug. 23.

It isn’t uncommon for a visa to be revoked at the border under the Trump administration, said Cori Alonso-Yoder, director of the Chacón Center for Immigrant Justice at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.

“Each new arrival to the United States is an opportunity for a new analysis of someone’s eligibility to enter into the United States,” she said.

Alonso-Yoder said it likely doesn’t help that Rajabi and his wife are from Iran.

“Especially if there’s a travel ban that has been signed, that really puts individuals, once they’ve left the country, in a very difficult position legally,” she said. “There’s just not the range of protections that can be sought to challenge that kind of exclusion from the United States.”

When he was stopped at the border, Rajabi called Hopkins’ emergency number for international students and began sending emails to his department and the university’s international student office.

In emails reviewed by The Baltimore Banner, Hopkins officials told Rajabi that the university was holding back from “making solicitations” to the federal government about visa issues. Officials told him that they recommended he exhaust all other options and wait six months before any outreach to elected officials.

Rajabi did get in touch with U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen’s office, though, with the help of the graduate student union.

Van Hollen’s office got Rajabi an appointment at the consulate in Vancouver on Sept. 11. He and his wife spent hundreds of dollars on plane tickets and accommodations to travel to the other side of Canada. It was painful because they didn’t have an income, but they were desperate, he said.

But there was more bad news waiting for them in Vancouver: They were denied new visas because of the travel ban.

An aide for Van Hollen, according to emails reviewed by The Banner, told Rajabi the senator’s office could not overturn the embassy’s decision, as it is outside their jurisdiction. A spokesperson for the office said they had been in touch with Rajabi but couldn’t share details of constituent cases, as a matter of privacy.

Rajabi has few options left, he said. He’s currently contacting universities in Canada and the United Kingdom to see if they can form an agreement with Johns Hopkins to let him resume his studies remotely and earn a salary.

Rajabi said the University of Toronto agreed to a student exchange, but Hopkins declined.

According to Donovan, in order to pay someone in a foreign country, the university “must ensure that such payment does not violate U.S. laws and that the person has the legal status in the foreign country that would allow them to be paid under that country’s visa and tax structure.”

Rajabi said if Johns Hopkins allows, he will enroll at the university in Canada or Europe as a visiting student. If Hopkins won’t recognize that and he cannot regain his U.S. visa by mid-January, Rajabi said, the couple’s “only option” is to return to Iran and wait for the outcome of the legal process.

They’re still holding out hope that they will obtain new visas this winter. He noted that traveling to Iran could “potentially complicate the issuance of a new visa” given the “ongoing political climate.” There is no U.S. embassy in Iran, which makes it even harder. When Rajabi and his wife first got their student visas in 2024, they had to use an embassy in Albania.

April Ma, a graduate fellow at the Chloe Center at Hopkins and a member of the graduate student union, which has created a petition in support of Rajabi, said in a statement that the university was neglecting him.

“For Hopkins, six months is nothing,” Ma wrote. “For Ehsan and his wife, it’s thousands of dollars in real money they don’t have and rapidly compounding insecurity about their basic safety and needs.”

Rajabi also consulted with attorneys, who have told him that his only viable option is to file a lawsuit, along with a temporary restraining order. But that would cost upwards of $10,000, lawyers have told him.

Without his Hopkins income, and unable to get a job in Toronto, Rajabi worries he’s out of luck.

“It’s devastating,” he said. “I cannot afford this.”

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.