Hard Mode: Playing the U.S. Immigration Survival Game in 2025
Since its inception, the video game industry has been a uniquely international community of creators, movers, and thinkers–from Japanese producers creating Italian super heroes in 1985¹ to Dutch entrepreneurs exporting Tetris from Russia to the west in 1989,² the games industry remains a wondrously tangled community of global players.
Today’s production teams leverage time, space, and technology to deliver interactive entertainment in totally distributed environments, perhaps with designers in Montreal, devs in Mumbai, and localizers in Milan–critical personnel who may need to converge in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Atlanta to push their product to the finish line.
However, recent headlines concerning travel to the United States³ are causing global mobility teams to rethink sending personnel to the United States, whether for secondments or brief business meetings–the potential risks of visa denial, detainment, or economic damage simply do not outweigh the rewards.
This article will attempt to assist in-house teams with risk assessment by explaining three major changes to U.S. immigration policy and procedure that have taken place since January 20, 2025.
I. Rollback of Temporary Protected Status (TPS)
While not a visa granting lawful status in the United States, TPS grants someone the ability to live and work in the United States in 6-18 month increments because they happened to be in the United States when a crisis or disaster occurred in their home country, preventing them from returning safely. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can designate which foreign nationals can apply for TPS based on conditions in their home country and the timing of their arrival to the United States. Some countries are designated for TPS for a very brief period, such as Kosovo during the Kosovo War or Rwanda during the Rwandan genocide. Other countries, like Nepal, were designated following an immense natural disaster and have remained TPS countries for over a decade.
As of May 2025, the following TPS designations are due to end on the end date indicated in the table below.
People operations professionals should audit I-9 forms to determine if any personnel have work authorization pursuant to TPS and create action plans assuming that work authorization may not be renewed.
II. Sudden Revocation of International Student Status
An undetermined⁵ number of student visas have been revoked by DHS beginning in March 2025. While international student status is normally governed by universities, in the spring of 2025, universities began to report that the lawful status of international students enrolled at their schools had been mysteriously and unilaterally revoked with their visa enrollment database (called Student and Exchange Visitors Information System, or SEVIS) without prior notice to the student or school.
Not all of the affected students are not coeds–after graduation, international students are granted 12-36 month work permits (called Optional Practical Training, or OPT) so that they can gain practical experience in their field of study.
These working professionals are still considered in student visa status, and may have their status unilaterally revoked without notice due to their activity on social media, allegations of terrorism based on political activism, or their political viewpoints.
When student visas are revoked in this manner, there is no grace period to settle their affairs prior to departing the United States or returning home–DHS has been encouraging students to immediately self-deport via a mobile application known as CBPOne.
While some students choose to “self-deport”, others have joined class-action lawsuits to enjoin DHS from this action. Beginning April 25, 2025, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) reported that DHS began reinstating the lawful status of some students in response to litigation; as of May 27, 2025, class action lawsuits in Georgia⁶ and New Hampshire⁷ have granted plaintiffs Temporary Restraining Orders preventing their removal from the United States.
Nevertheless, people operations professionals should audit I-9 forms to determine if any personnel have work authorization pursuant to OPT and create contingency plans around a sudden revocation of lawful status or work authorization and also advise against international travel.
III. Detention and/or Inspection of Electronic Devices at Ports of Entry
In 2018, three DnD artists from Europe were heading to a concept push in Seattle–they never made it.⁸ They were accused of trying to evade U.S. immigration laws, detained overnight, and were sent back to their home countries. Since 2018, I have employed this story as a cautionary but fantastic tale for travelers whose activities in the United States may be questioned by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers. In 2025, I no longer tell this tale and simply advise my clients to prepare themselves for travel by:
1. Scrubbing their social media.
In the gaming industry, most professionals will have some sort of public online presence to engage with fans or community members. While there is no need to erase one’s existence on the internet, keeping public forums free of political or religious opinions as well as images or anecdotes about alcohol or controlled substance use is advised.
2. Deleting messaging apps.
Confidentiality is critical in our industry, and any potential leak of assets or information is a risk to be avoided. At a port-of-entry, all travelers–whether foreign or U.S. citizens–may be subject to a search of any and all electronic devices, with or without a warrant. CBP officers may ask travelers to unlock their devices, and can open any apps on a traveler’s phone–accessing photographs, text messages, emails, Slack messages, Discord messages, etc. While keeping a device in airplane mode can prevent new messages from being pushed to the device, any existing data can be read and reviewed by CBP. Therefore, one way to protect sensitive information is to delete the apps that contain the information–and then re-install them once safely out of the airport.
3. Consider traveling without your laptop.
While traveling without a laptop on a work trip is impractical, it avoids the risk of the device being searched and seized by CBP, which has the authority to do so. During a seizure, CBP retrieves data from the hard drive by plugging in the traveler’s device to a government computer, then returns the device to the traveler while they keep the data for further analysis.
4. Making emergency plans.
Travelers should designate a friend, a family member, and a colleague to contact their workplace and/or immigration counsel if they do not receive a phone call or text within a few hours of expected arrival about their status. While travelers do not have a right to counsel at an international border, they can designate an immigration attorney prior to arrival who can attempt to locate them at nearby detention centers if the designated friend, family member, or colleague does not receive contact in a timely fashion.
IV. Conclusion
The meta-progression for U.S. immigration and nationality law in 2025 has been overwhelming–and it’s only going to get wilder. To effectively advise globally distributed teams on travel to the United States, mobility professionals and in-house counsel must be hypervigilant and mitigate as much risk as possible in the current political climate.
Genie Doi advises clients exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law, focusing on serving clients in the video game, esports, and content creation industries. She is an active member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and frequently speaks on sports and entertainment visas across the nation. Genie is based in Osaka and likes to discover new indie games on the long flights back to Los Angeles. She can be reached at genie@avoceltaw.com.
¹ Jennifer Dewinter, Shigeru Miyamoto: Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, The Legend Of Zelda (Influential Video Game Designers (Bloomsbury, 2015).
² Henk Rogers, The Perfect Game Tetris: From Russia With Love (Di Angelo Publications 2025).
³ Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks and Caitlyn Freeman, Another Filipino green card holder returning to WA detained at Sea-Tac, The Seattle Times (May 29, 2025 at 0:01am), https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/another-filipino-green-card-holder-returning-to-wa-detained-at-sea-tac/.
Rory Carroll, Irish woman detained by US immigration released after 17 days in custody, The Guardian (May 29 at 0:03am), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/08/irish-woman-cliona-ward-detained-us-immigration-released-17-days-custody.
Daniel Arkin, German national with U.S. green card detained at ICE facility, family says, NBC News (May 29 at 0:05am), https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/german-national-green-card-holder-immigration-detention-fabian-schmidt-rcna196714.
⁴ On January 17, 2025, the Biden Administration extended TPS for 2023 recipients from Venezuela through October 2026. On January 28, 2025, the newly inaugurated Trump Administration announced its intention to vacate that extension. On February 5, 2025, the Trump Administration announced that 2023 recipients would lose their status and work authorization effective April 7, 2025. However, on March 31, 2025, a district court enjoined the Trump Administration from revoking TPS on April 7, ordering the effective date be postponed. National TPS Alliance, et al., v. Kristi Noem et al., No. 3:25-cv-01766 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 31, 2025). The Trump Administration appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit which upheld the postponement. However, on May 19, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court, in an emergency hearing, held that the district court’s order to the Trump Administration regarding postponing the April 7 expiration is stayed. As of May 27, 2025, the USCIS website acknowledges the Supreme Court’s ruling but also states that 2023 recipients have status through October 2, 2026, but that this date is under protest by court order.
⁵ Estimates range from 1200 students across 200 universities based on the number of plaintiffs in nation-wide class action lawsuits.
⁶ Temporary Restraining Order Granted In Student Visa Revocation Case Doe. v. Bondi, ACLU Georgia (May 29, 2025 at 0:09am) https://www.acluga.org/en/press-releases/temporary-restraining-order-granted-student-visa-revocation-case-doe-v-bondi
⁷ Scott Merrill. Student Visa Crackdown Reversed Amid Lawsuit as ICE Enforcement Escalates, New Hampshire Bar Association (May 29, 2025 at 0:09am) https://www.nhbar.org/student-visa-crackdown-reversed-amid-lawsuit-as-ice-enforcement-escalates/
⁸ Vivian Kane, Artists on Their Way to a Wizards of the Coast Brainstorming Session Detained by ICE, The Mary Sue (May 29, 2025 at 0:10am) https://www.themarysue.com/d-and-d-artists-detained-ice/.
