Documentary by ex-Trump advisor calls for removal of Chinese students

Former Trump campaign advisor Steve Cortes is calling for the removal of Chinese nationals from American campuses in a newly released documentary targeting the University of Illinois.

Released early this month, the film “China’s College Takeover” frames Chinese international students as a threat to American access to higher education. University officials and scholars have rejected the claims, warning that the rhetoric echoes longstanding narratives that have historically targeted Asian communities.

The documentary centers on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a public flagship university that enrolls one of the largest populations of Chinese international students in the U.S. In the film, Cortes argues that American public universities should prioritize U.S. citizens and sharply restrict or eliminate enrollment of Chinese nationals.

“The total number of Chinese nationals should be zero, none. Not welcome here. United States schools for United States citizens,” Cortes says in the documentary. Cortes also calls for capping overall foreign student enrollment, contending that international admissions policies disadvantage American applicants seeking spots in competitive programs.

“We know that some of these students, perhaps a large cohort of these students, are spying on us. They are saboteurs,” said Cortes in an interview with “On Balance.”

University officials have rejected the documentary’s assertion that international students are displacing Illinois residents. Pat Wade, spokesperson for the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said the school ranks second among Big Ten universities in enrolling in-state students and that 71% of freshmen last fall were from Illinois, including 6,587 in-state students compared with 724 from China.

“Domestic and international students with strong academics, well-written essays, and activities faced denial due to space constraints in specific majors, in addition to a larger and more competitive applicant pool,” Wade said in an email.

Data from the university’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions indicate that international applicants face steeper odds. Less than one-third of international applicants were admitted in 2025, compared with about half of Illinois resident applicants.

Scholars say warnings about there being “too many” students from a particular country carry historical weight. Shao Dan, professor of East Asian studies at the university, said such language “could lead to unintended harmful and disastrous social consequences,” noting that similar patterns have appeared in U.S. history and abroad.

Shao described “yellow peril” as rhetoric that frames East Asians as economic, cultural or political threats. Yoon Pak, professor in the College of Education and Asian American studies at the University of Illinois, pointed to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the first federal law to bar immigration based on race and nationality. “The sense of the ‘yellow hordes,’ the ‘yellow peril,’ the fear, the invasion. It’s really preying upon these immediate feelings of ‘attack.’ And it is the kind of rhetoric that still unfortunately continues today,” Pak said.