Harvard secures extension of court order blocking Trump's international student ban

New Straits Times

5 hours ago

BOSTON: A federal judge said on Monday that she would issue a brief extension of an order temporarily blocking President Donald Trump's plan to bar foreign nationals from entering the US to study at Harvard University while she decides whether to issue a longer-term injunction.
US District Judge Allison Burroughs, at the end of a hearing in Boston in Harvard's legal challenge to the restrictions, extended to June 23 a temporary restraining order that had been set to expire on Thursday. She said she wanted to give herself more time to prepare a ruling.
"We'll kick out an opinion as soon as we can," she said.
The judge scheduled the hearing after issuing a temporary restraining order on June 5 preventing the administration from implementing a proclamation that Trump had signed a day earlier. A preliminary injunction would provide longer-term relief to Harvard while its lawsuits proceeds.
Almost 6,800 international students attended Harvard in its most recent school year, making up about 27 per cent of the student population of the prestigious Cambridge, Massachusetts-based school.
The judge, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, did not indicate how she would ultimately rule. But she said a US Department of Justice attorney defending Trump's policy faced an "uphill battle" convincing her that Harvard would not be irreparably harmed if the proclamation was implemented.
Ian Gershengorn, the school's lawyer, told the judge the "impact of the proclamation is devastating to Harvard and its students."
He said Trump signed the proclamation to retaliate against Harvard in violation of its free speech rights under the US Constitution's First Amendment for refusing to accede to the administration's demands to control the school's governance, curriculum and the ideology of its faculty and students.
Justice Department attorney Tiberius Davis countered that Congress had given Trump "sweeping authority" under the Immigration and Nationality Act to suspend the entry of specific categories of foreign nationals, which the president relied on to address national security concerns at Harvard.
"We don't trust them to host foreign students," Davis said.
The Trump administration has launched a multifront attack on the oldest and wealthiest US university, freezing billions of US dollars in grants and other funding and proposing to end its tax-exempt status, prompting a series of legal challenges.
Harvard has filed two separate lawsuits before Burroughs seeking to unfreeze around US$2.5 billion in funding and to prevent the administration from blocking the ability of international students to attend the university.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on May 22 announced that her department was immediately revoking Harvard's Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, the governmental mechanism that allows it to enrol foreign students.
Her action was almost immediately blocked by Burroughs. While the Department of Homeland Security has since shifted to challenging Harvard's certification through a months-long administrative process, Burroughs at a May 29 hearing said she planned to issue a "broad" injunction to maintain the status quo.
A week later, though, Trump signed his proclamation, which cited national security concerns to contend that Harvard is "no longer a trustworthy steward of international student and exchange visitor programmes."
The proclamation suspended the entry of foreign nationals to study at Harvard or participate in exchange visitor programmes for an initial period of six months and directed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to consider whether to revoke visas of international students already enrolled at Harvard.
At Monday's hearing, Davis cited Harvard's acceptance of foreign money including from China and what he said was an inadequate response to the administration's demand for information on foreign students who engaged in illegal activity during a period of "increased unrest" on its campus as examples of those national security concerns.
Trump has accused Harvard of creating an unsafe environment for Jewish students and allowing antisemitism to fester on its campus. Protests over Israel's treatment of Palestinians during its war with Hamas in Gaza have roiled numerous universities' campuses, including Harvard's.