Japanese BYU student reveals bizarre reasons he's being deported (2025)

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A Japanese PhD student and father-of-five is being deported because of two speeding tickets and a fishing citation that was later dismissed in court.

ICE agents have revoked the student visa of Suguru Onda, who is one year away from completing his program at Brigham Young University in Utah with little explanation.

It means that his wife and five children may also have to leave the US for Japan within weeks, despite having lived in the US on his visa for years.

'I think it's unfair,' Onda told ABC4.com. 'At least they should notify us or reach out to us, or give us some explanation, but there's nothing.'

Onda said he received an email from BYU's international student office telling him his immigration status had changed. He went to their office to speak in person.

'The university didn't get anything, I didn't receive anything, so we just found out it is terminated,' Onda told ABC.com.

'I know I'm not alone, and lots of international students was affected by this visa termination,' Onda added. 'I really hope things get better.'

The devastated student's lawyer, Adam Crayk, said BYU was told his criminal background was part of the reason for the change in his status.

But Crayk researched Onda's history and found only two speeding tickets and a fishing citation which was dismissed in court.

'This is no longer about politics,' Crayk told ABC4.com. 'This is an issue about right or wrong.'

Authorities told Onda he could either go back to Japan and request a new I-20 immigration form from BYU, or apply for an F-1 via, or wait for up to one year for his current visa to be re-validated.

President Donald Trump has ordered DHS Sec. Kristi Noem to increase the speed of deportations, and Crayk speculated that the use of AI technology could have led to the decision to deport Onda.

'Whether it's tech, bot, algorithm, AI, they have a technology… there's close to a million student visas, and so — for one person to monitor that it's fairly difficult,' Crayk told ABC4.com.

'But when you make a decision to revoke, you ought to at least have somebody check that.'

Onda's case is the latest amid Trump's immigration crackdown, which has seen a range of people deported, from murderers and rapists to pro-Palestine protesters.

In late February, Department of Homeland Security Sec. Kristi Noem announced that in conjunction with Border Czar Tom Homan, immigration officials had already apprehended over 20,000 at large illegal aliens since Trump was sworn in.

'That's a 627% increase in monthly arrests compared to just 33,000 at large arrests under Biden for ALL of last year,' she wrote in a post on X.

In another post on the platform she bragged that DHS has slashed border encounters from 15,000 a day under Joe Biden to just 200 under Trump.

It's a '15-year low,' she wrote.

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