International students welcome at Harvard after Trump bid to keep them out

(CN) — Harvard University tacked on a win against the White House on Friday as a Massachusetts federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s move to stop the Ivy League school from enrolling international students. 

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs gave federal officials 72 hours to tell staff to disregard the Department of Homeland Security’s May 22 notice that it would immediately revoke Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, which allows universities to enroll international students on F-1 or J-1 nonimmigrant visas. 

Immigration officials must also restore every visa holder and applicant to the position they would have been in without the revocation notice. 

Harvard says the administration made its 7,000 F-1 and J-1 visa holders “pawns in the government’s escalating campaign of retaliation” after the school rejected the government’s demands “to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students.”

The university is separately fighting President Donald Trump’s attempt to cut more than $2 billion of the school’s research funding. The administration has also ended the school’s federal contracts and threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status.

Burroughs, a Barack Obama appointee, first blocked the international student program revocation on May 23, just hours after Harvard filed suit against DHS, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and other officials and agencies. 

“With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body,” the school said in its 70-page complaint. “Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard.” 

Noem said the sanction was punishment for Harvard’s leadership failing to crack down on pro-Palestinian protests. 

Homeland Security previously asked the school for information about foreign students’ participation in misconduct that could lead to their deportation — specifically, their involvement in campus protests — and Noem claimed that the school’s responses have been “insufficient.”

Friday’s injunction advances Harvard’s case beyond the temporary restraining order Burroughs issued in late May. 

At the time, a DHS spokesperson accused the judge of kneecapping Trump’s powers. 

“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments; that fact hasn’t changed,” the department’s assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, said.

A spokesperson for Harvard offered a brief response to Friday’s order: “Harvard will continue to defend its rights — and the rights of its students and scholars.”

In its lawsuit, Harvard references other universities that have faced sudden funding cuts by the Trump administration “with little warning and even less explanation,” including Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, Northwestern and Trump’s own alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania.

“All told, the tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear: Allow the government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions,” Harvard wrote.

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