Harvard Sues Over Trump Barring Foreign Students’ US Entry

Harvard University sued to stop the Trump administration from barring its international students’ entrance to the US, adding to a high-stakes legal battle between the government and the school.

Harvard asked a judge on Thursday to immediately halt President Donald Trump’s proclamation that the university’s foreign students will no longer be able to enter the country. The amended lawsuit expands on one the university filed on May 23 over another US effort to stop Harvard from enrolling international students. 

Trump said Wednesday that Harvard’s refusal to provide records about international student misconduct poses a national security risk. His executive action blocked Harvard’s foreign students and researchers from entering the country. Last month, the administration revoked the school’s ability to sponsor their visas. 

“We hope the court will act swiftly,” Harvard President Alan Garber said in a statement. “While the court considers our request, contingency plans are being developed to ensure that international students and scholars can continue to pursue their work at Harvard this summer and through the coming academic year.”

Trump’s proclamation further escalated his feud with the oldest and richest US university, where foreign students make up 27% of the campus population. Harvard has also sued over the US freezing more than $2.6 billion in federal funding. 

Both lawsuits claim Trump is illegally retaliating against Harvard, violating the school’s free speech rights because it failed to adhere to his wishes. The White House and Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Trump’s actions are “part of a concerted and escalating campaign of retaliation by the government in clear retribution for Harvard’s exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students,” lawyers for the university said in the filing in Boston federal court. 

Trump’s order claims Harvard is “no longer a trustworthy steward of international student and exchange visitor programs,” accusing the school of failing to address conduct violations and an increase of “violent crime rates” on campus.It also criticizes Harvard’s researchers for partnering with Chinese colleagues in ways it says could advance Beijing’s military modernization effort.

The proclamation places a six-month suspension on international students and exchange visitors seeking to do research. It also directs Secretary of State Marco Rubio to review whether the visas of existing foreign nationals at Harvard should be revoked. The US would make an exception for “any alien whose entry would be in the national interest,” according to the proclamation. 

The university has said that it has been in regular contact with DHS and supplied the legally required data and additional disciplinary information on international students.

US District Judge Allison Burroughs has temporarily barred the government from revoking Harvard’s participation in its Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which is run by the Department of Homeland Security. 

Harvard’s more than 7,000 students and researchers who hold visas “have become pawns in the government’s escalating campaign of retaliation,” lawyers for the university said in the lawsuit. “The proclamation is a patent effort to end-run this court’s order.”

Harvard’s undergraduate student body president, Abdullah Shahid Sial, went home to Pakistan after the school year ended. Now, whether he comes back to campus for his junior year is “totally in the hands of U.S. immigration offices.”

“I think the Trump administration has done a very good job of making international students feel unwelcome,” said Sial, 20. “I feel unwelcome.”

If a judge blocks Trump’s latest directive, the case could eventually end up at the Supreme Court. In 2018, the high court ruled that the president has sweeping authority to restrict entry into the country. That 5-4 ruling upheld Trump’s travel ban, which barred entry by people from a group of mostly Muslim countries.

The president has sought to reshape Harvard’s policies on a wide range of issues, including admissions and faculty hiring practices, citing the pro-Palestinian protests and incidents of antisemitism that rocked college campuses after Hamas’ October 2023 attack on Israel started the war in Gaza.

Trump has said he wants to cap Harvard’s foreign student enrollment at 15%, revoke its tax-exempt status and cancel its remaining federal contracts. 

In another action Wednesday against universities, the Trump administration announced that it was asking an agency to revoke the accreditation of Columbia University.

The case is Harvard v. US Department of Homeland Security, 25-cv-11472, US District Court, District of Massachusetts .

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