Judge Blocks Trump Ban on Foreign Students at Harvard

Update (12:10 pm ET):

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs handed down a temporary restraining order Friday, halting the Trump administration's ban on international students at Harvard University while litigation proceeds.

The judge agreed with Harvard's claim that the action would cause "immediate and irreparable injury" to the university.

Earlier:

Harvard University officials accused the Trump administration of using more than 7,000 international students and their families as "pawns in the government's escalating campaign of retaliation" in a lawsuit filed Friday, a day after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced the Ivy League school would no longer be permitted to enroll foreign students.

"With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard's student body, international students who contribute significantly to the university and its mission," reads the lawsuit. "Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard."

The university said it was seeking a temporary restraining order to the stop DHS from terminating Harvard's Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, which would force thousands of foreign students to transfer to other schools—or risk losing their legal status—and cancel the plans of many other students planning to travel to the U.S. in the coming months to begin attending in the fall.

Harvard said in the lawsuit that the move was a "blatant violation" of the First Amendment, the constitutional right to due process, and other laws.

DHS announced the termination of Harvard's certification weeks after the Trump administration threatened to revoke the school's tax-exempt status and froze more than $2 billion in federal funding after university president Alan Garber said the administration would not comply with President Donald Trump's demands to "derecognize pro-Palestine student groups, audit its academic programs for viewpoint diversity, and expel students involved in an altercation at a 2023 pro-Palestine protest on the Harvard Business School campus."

Harvard filed a lawsuit over the frozen funding last month, and arguments in the case are set to be heard in court in July.

The Trump administration's attacks have largely centered on what it claims is Harvard's failure to address "antisemitism" on campus, but a statement by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday additionally accused the school of "coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus." Noem provided no evidence of the claim.

Garber wrote to the university community on Friday, announcing the lawsuit and assuring foreign students that they are "vital members of our community."

"You are our classmates and friends, our colleagues and mentors, our partners in the work of this great institution," said Garber. "Thanks to you, we know more and understand more, and our country and our world are more enlightened and more resilient. We will support you as we do our utmost to ensure that Harvard remains open to the world."

He added that Trump's latest attack amounts to retaliation "for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government's illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body."

Garber noted in Friday's lawsuit and in the letter to students, faculty, and staff that Harvard has complied with the administration's demands, send on April 16, for information about each student visa holder at the university's 13 schools.

"On May 22, DHS deemed Harvard's response 'insufficient,' without explaining why or citing any regulation with which Harvard failed to comply," reads Friday's lawsuit.

The New York Times interviewed one Harvard student from Ukraine who said she would not be able to return home due to Russia's war on the Eastern European country. She said she was considering disrupting her education to go elsewhere in Europe to live with relatives.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology swiftly extended an open invitation for international students at Harvard to transfer with an expedited admissions process in light of Trump's action.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council said he expected Harvard to "win a temporary restraining order before Monday" in the case.