The International Student Solidarity Statement is written in light of the guideline published by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as the consequent public debates around international students. The guideline in question revealed DHS and ICE’s abrupt plan to deport international college students unless students attend in-person courses in Fall 2020. The guideline provoked an immediate public outcry owing to its underlying xenophobia and the U.S. government’s general disregard for human lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. The language used to advocate for international students, however, also exposed the lack of collective understanding of the U.S. higher education that has long bolstered and sustained systemic racism and other gravely detrimental inequities. The International Student Solidarity Statement critiques 1) the rhetoric of neoliberal respectability pervading conversations about international student rights, 2) the harmful binary between “legal” international students and undocumented students, and 3) the absence of discussion of race and imperialism when discussing the sociohistorical conditions of international students.