The Battalion - April 10, 2025 by The Battalion

THURSDAY, APRIL 10

OPINION Yeah, I can tell you used AI to write your essay; LLMs are hurting Aggie academics A6

@THEBATTONLINE

SPORTS Visually impaired athletes find their place with BCS Outlaws’ beep baseball team B1

Q-DROP DEADLINE APRIL 14

STATUS REVOKED Fifteen international students lose legal status as Trump admin cracks down

By Nicholas Gutteridge Editor-in-Chief The legal status of 15 Texas A&M international students has been changed in a government database as of Wednesday afternoon, putting their ability to stay in the U.S. into question. The number is increasing and stood at nine on Monday morning and 11 by Tuesday, with the university noticing the first change on March 28. Of the 11 A&M students impacted as of Tuesday, eight are currently enrolled, and three have graduated and remained on a visa using one of several post-grad options available. Ten are graduate students, one is from the Galveston campus and the nine graduate students from College Station are split equally between the Colleges of Engineering, Arts & Sciences and Agriculture & Life Sciences. In an email to faculty, staff and students sent Wednesday afternoon, Provost Alan Sams said A&M officials “do not have clarity on why these records are being terminated.” Here’s what to know The federal government seems to be targeting international students with any semblance of a criminal record, no matter how small. In an email obtained by The Battalion, director of A&M’s International Student and Scholar Services, or ISSS, Samantha Clement said the government’s listed reason for the status changes was that the student was “identified in criminal records check and/or has had their VISA revoked.” The Associated Press also reported that after three Aggies had their visas terminated, university officials who looked into the cases

found that each “had long-resolved offenses on their records, including one with a speeding ticket.” A university official said the students had not committed any dangerous offenses known to the university. In a State Department press conference Tuesday morning, spokesperson Tammy Bruce declined to share the criteria being used to target students but said it was being “applied appropriately.” “We don’t discuss individual visas because of the privacy issues involved,” Bruce said. “We don’t go into statistics or numbers. We don’t go into the rationale for what happens with individual visas. What we can tell you is that the department revokes visas every day in order to secure our borders and to keep our community safe, and we’ll continue to do so.” Other international students at multiple U.S. universities who have had their visas revoked have been involved in campus activism, largely pro-Palestine advocacy. However, it remains unclear whether those affected at A&M had similar affiliations. Axios reported that more than 300 international students nationwide have had their visas revoked in recent weeks. The federal government is not communicating or working with the university Clement said the federal government was changing students’ legal status without notifying A&M or those impacted, forcing the institution to monitor students’ statuses throughout the day. When the university notices a discrepancy, officials get in contact with the student as quickly as possible to inform them of their options. LEGAL ON A3

Photo courtesy of REUTERS/MARCO BELLO

The badge of an ICE Field Office Director, Enforcement and Removal Operations, in Hawthorne, California, U.S., March 1, 2020.

Water rights lead to legal fights A&M, BCS sue groundwater management over pumping permits

The Aggie Boxing Club will hold second annual event at Bryan Texas Legends Event Center

By J.M. Wise News Editor

Kennedy Long — THE BATTALION

Water drips from the faucet of a College Station resident’s home on Wednesday, April 2, 2025.

A “bitter” legal battle between two growing regions in Texas has caught the Texas A&M System and the cities of Bryan and College Station between a rock and a hard place: the law and their growing need for water. The Simsboro formation is the area of the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer that provides groundwater to cities in the Brazos Valley via pumps. Georgetown, a city north of Austin, has applied for a permit to pump water out of the Simsboro formation. Residents of Brazos Valley believe that pumping water out of the formation will threaten their water supply, and subsequently their way of life. Since September 2024, the water in the aquifer has been caught in the middle of a lawsuit between A&M, Brazos Valley cities and the Groundwater Conservation district. A&M and the cities argue that the permits were granted improperly

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due to a lack of proper procedure during the permit granting process, which according to groundwater law experts is the only route they could have taken to fight the water permits. Professor of law Gabriel Eckstein, the director of the A&M law school’s program on energy, environmental and natural resource systems, said Texas’ groundwater laws can be confusing to navigate. “The [Texas Supreme Court] in 1904 said, ‘Well, we don’t know a lot about groundwater, how it flows, it’s mysterious, the best thing for development is to give landowners free reign to maximize their natural resources,’” Eckstein said. “ … If that wasn’t bad enough, in 2012, in the Day case, the Texas Supreme Court again not only resolidified the rule of capture but also gave it a little more definition.” The Texas law governing groundwater is called “rule of capture” and dates back to English common law. Rule of capture allows for landowners to capture oil, gas and water on their property and gives them total control over the resources. The water under a person’s land legally belongs to them until it flows out of the area. WATER ON A3