Judge halts Trump administration action barring Harvard from enrolling foreign students

Hours after Harvard University sued the Trump administration for revoking its ability to enroll international students, a federal judge temporarily barred the Department of Homeland Security from allowing the change to take effect.

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, a Barack Obama appointee, granted the Ivy League school's request for a temporary restraining order on May 23 because, she wrote, the Trump administration's new policy would bring "immediate and irreparable injury" to Harvard's campus.

The provisional ban took effect immediately and will remain in place until the judge decides whether to issue a broader pause while the two sides battle in court. A hearing to consider a preliminary injunction is set for May 29.

Harvard's complaint, filed in federal district court in Massachusetts, called the Trump administration's move a "blatant violation" of the First Amendment, Due Process Clause and the Administrative Procedures Act.

In a message to the Harvard community, the university's president, Alan Garber, condemned what he called an "unlawful and unwarranted action."

"It imperils the futures of thousands of students and scholars across Harvard and serves as a warning to countless others at colleges and universities throughout the country who have come to America to pursue their education and fulfill their dreams," he said.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sent a letter to Harvard's leadership on May 22 saying the school's ability to participate in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, a prerequisite for colleges and universities to enroll international students, would be terminated "effective immediately." All international students would need to transfer to another university to stay in the United States, she said.

"This action should not surprise you and is the unfortunate result of Harvard's failure to comply with simple reporting requirements," Noem wrote in the letter.

The punishment dated back to April 16, when Noem first ordered that Harvard produce troves of detailed information about every international student attending the school.

"This demand was unprecedented, seeking information far beyond what DHS’s regulations require Harvard to maintain and report and far beyond any request Harvard has received in its more than 70 years hosting foreign students under the F-1 visa program," the university's lawyers wrote in the lawsuit.

Still, the university said it had complied within the scope of federal law and its reporting requirements, producing thousands of data points about its entire student population with F-1 visas.

Those responses, Noem said May 22, were "insufficient." She then gave the university 72 hours to deliver more information, including "any and all" disciplinary records of nonimmigrant students enrolled at the school over the last five years.

Noem's unprecedented act, which effectively prevented Harvard from enrolling foreign students, marked arguably the biggest escalation in the Trump administration's battle with the university, which has already had billions of dollars in federal research funding frozen. The campus is separately being investigated over whether it should maintain its tax-exempt status. The effective ban at Harvard created a chilling effect at other colleges nationwide, while imperiling operations at the storied campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard," the school's lawyers argued in the new complaint.

Harvard's nearly 7,000 international students make up roughly a quarter of the university's population. As the summer begins, many are awaiting further guidance from the school about what they should do next. The government's actions came just days before graduation.