Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Ban on Enrolling Foreign Students at Harvard in Crushing Blow to Trump Admin
A U.S. District Court Judge has ruled that the federal government isn't allowed to make any permanent changes to Harvard University's student visa program. U.S. District Court Judge Allison Burroughs said on Thursday that she will order the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department not to make any changes to Harvard's student visa program.
"I want to maintain the status quo," Burroughs said, supporting the idea of allowing Harvard to resume accepting international students and visa holders and urged both parties to work out a deal to temporarily lift the freeze on the student's visa program, CNN reported as the details were still being hashed out in court.
Another Setback for Trump
"It doesn't need to be draconian, but I want to make sure it's worded in such a way that nothing changes," Burroughs said. Harvard's lead attorney, Ian Gershengorn, added that he wants to ensure no "shenanigans" to take place once the order is in place.
Hours before the intense legal clash began, the administration filed a legal notice giving Harvard 30 days to defend its right to continue admitting foreign students under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program.
On Wednesday, President Trump said that Harvard should cut its international student population by half to help "make Harvard great again," setting a cap of 15 percent compared to the current 27.2 percent of international enrollees.
"We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools, [but] they can't get in because we have foreign students there," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
Trump has also warned that Harvard could lose roughly $3.3 billion in federal funding if it doesn't comply with certain demands aimed at curbing antisemitism on campus. He even suggested redirecting that money to vocational schools instead.
Harvard at the Center of Controversy
Meanwhile, just six miles from a courtroom hearing on the matter, Harvard held its 2025 commencement ceremony. University President Alan Garber, who has pledged to "stand firm" in the dispute with the administration, was cheered as he greeted the crowd of nearly 32,000 gathered in Harvard Yard.
The graduation ceremony was prepped with several anti-Israel and anti-Trump remarks and protests. According to the Harvard Crimson, around 50 protesters lined Massachusetts Avenue holding signs with messages like "support students punished for opposing genocide" and "stop arming Israel."
During the graduation ceremony, a brief confrontation broke out between campus police and two people who unfurled a banner that read "there are no universities left in Gaza" on the steps of Widener Library. The Harvard Crimson described the scene as "heated."
Police confiscated the banner, and one of the protesters was heard shouting, "give me my flag back" at an officer. It remains unclear whether the people involved had any official ties to Harvard.
Elsewhere on campus, another protest banner was hung from a second-story window of Sever Hall. It read, "Harvard divest from genocide in Gaza" in bold black and red letters.
A small group of graduates in their caps and gowns near the building turned to take pictures of the banner before campus police quickly took it down. According to the report, three university officials went into the building to try to identify who was responsible, but they were unsuccessful.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNA
9 hours ago
- CNA
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth compares Donald Trump with Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew
SINGAPORE: US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Saturday (May 31) likened US President Donald Trump to Singapore's founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. In a major speech outlining US strategy in the Asia-Pacific region, Mr Hegseth referred to both leaders as "historic men". "Like the late prime minister, President Trump's approach is grounded in common sense and national interests," he said at the Shangri-La Dialogue, which gathers key defence leaders from around the world. Mr Lee served as Singapore's prime minister for three decades. Mr Hegseth praised his "sage leadership and strategic vision". "That's what common sense policies can achieve, and that's precisely what President Trump's vision is all about." Mr Lee, who turned Singapore into a high-tech industrial and financial centre, remains highly revered in Singapore more than a decade after his death.
AsiaOne
10 hours ago
- AsiaOne
Trump administration orders enhanced vetting of all Harvard University-linked visa applicants, World News
WASHINGTON -The US State Department ordered all its consular missions overseas to begin additional vetting of visa applicants looking to travel to Harvard University for any purpose, according to an internal cable seen by Reuters on Friday (May 30), in a move that significantly expands President Donald Trump's crackdown against the academic institution. In a cable dated May 30 and sent to all US diplomatic and consular posts, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio instructed the immediate start of "additional vetting of any non-immigrant visa applicant seeking to travel to Harvard University for any purpose." Such applicants include but are not limited to prospective students, students, faculty, employees, contractors, guest speakers, and tourists, the cable said. The word "any" in the cable text is written in bold format and underlined. Harvard University failed to maintain "a campus environment free from violence and anti-Semitism", the cable said, and that the enhanced vetting measures were aimed at helping consular officers identify visa applicants "with histories of anti-Semitic harassment and violence." While the US has previously required additional vetting of visa applicants from particular countries, applying such procedures against Harvard appears to be an unprecedented use of the visa process against a university that has fallen out of favour with the administration. The additional measures for Harvard-linked applicants were first reported by Fox News, but the cable itself has not been previously reported. The State Department does not comment on its internal documents or communications, a department spokesperson said in an email when asked about the cable. The Trump administration has launched a multifront attack on the nation's oldest and wealthiest university, freezing billions of dollars in grants and other funding, proposing to end its tax-exempt status and opening an investigation into whether it discriminated against white, Asian, male or straight employees or job applicants. Trump alleges top US universities are cradles of anti-American movements. In a dramatic escalation, his administration last week revoked Harvard's ability to enroll foreign students, a move later blocked by a federal judge. Harvard argues the Trump administration is retaliating against it for refusing to accede to its demands to control the school's governance, curriculum and the ideology of its faculty and students. Private social media accounts The move is also part of the Trump administration's intensifying immigration crackdown and follows Rubio's order to stop scheduling new appointments for student and exchange visitor visa applicants. The top US diplomat also said earlier this week that Washington will start revoking the visas of Chinese students with links to the Chinese Communist Party and those who are studying in critical areas. Implementation of this order will also serve as a "pilot for expanded screening and vetting of visa applicants," the cable adds, raising the possibility of the measures taken against Harvard and visa applicants being used as a template for other universities. The order also directs consular officers to consider questioning the credibility of the applicant if the individual's social media accounts are private, as that may be reflective of "evasiveness," and instructs them to ask applicants to set their accounts to public. The officers can remind the applicant that "limited access to or visibility of social media activity could be construed as an effort to evade or hide certain activity," the cable said. [[nid:718591]] The cable instructs the consular officers to consider any information about the applicant that does not raise to the level of inadmissibility to ensure that the applicant's claimed purpose of travel is consistent with the visa they are seeking. "If you are not personally and completely satisfied that the applicant, during his time in the United States, will engage in activities consistent with his non-immigrant visa status, you should refuse the visa...," the cable said. Such a recommendation would follow comments from Rubio in recent months saying he has personally revoked the visas of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, including students, because they got involved in activities that go against US foreign policy priorities. "If you're coming here to create problems, you're probably going to have a problem," Rubio told reporters on April 7. "We're not going to continue to be stupid enough to let people into our country who are coming here to tear things up."
AsiaOne
11 hours ago
- AsiaOne
US Supreme Court lets Trump revoke humanitarian legal status for migrants, World News
The US Supreme Court on Friday (May 30) let President Donald Trump's administration revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants living in the United States, bolstering the Republican president's drive to step up deportations. The court put on hold Boston-based US District Judge Indira Talwani's order halting the administration's move to end the immigration "parole" granted to 532,000 of these migrants by Trump's predecessor Joe Biden, potentially exposing many of them to rapid removal, while the case plays out in lower courts. Immigration parole is a form of temporary permission under American law to be in the country for "urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit," allowing recipients to live and work in the United States. Biden, a Democrat, used parole as part of his administration's approach to deter illegal immigration at the US-Mexican border. Trump called for ending humanitarian parole programs in an executive order signed on January 20, his first day back in office. The Department of Homeland Security subsequently moved to terminate them in March, cutting short the two-year parole grants. The administration said revoking the parole status would make it easier to place migrants in a fast-track deportation process called "expedited removal." As with many of the court's orders issued in an emergency fashion, Friday's decision was unsigned and gave no reasoning. Two of the nine-member court's three liberal justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, publicly dissented. The court botched its decision by failing to account for its impact, Jackson wrote in an accompanying opinion. The outcome, Jackson wrote, "undervalues the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending." The case is one of many that Trump's administration has brought in an emergency fashion to the nation's highest judicial body seeking to undo decisions by judges impeding his sweeping policies, including several targeting immigrants. The Supreme Court on May 19 also let Trump end a deportation protection called temporary protected status that had been granted under Biden to about 350,000 Venezuelans living in the United States, while that legal dispute plays out. Biden starting in 2022 let Venezuelans who entered the United States by air request a two-year parole if they passed security checks and had a US financial sponsor. Biden expanded that to Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans in 2023. A group of migrants granted parole and Americans who serve as their sponsors sued, claiming the administration violated federal law governing the actions of government agencies. Talwani in April found that the law governing such parole did not allow for the programme's blanket termination, instead requiring a case-by-case review. The Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals declined to put the judge's decision on hold. 'Traumatic impact' Guerline Jozef, executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, one of the plaintiffs, expressed dismay at Friday's decision. "Once again, the Trump administration blatantly proves their disregard for the lives of those truly in need of protection by taking away their status and rendering them undocumented. We have already seen the traumatic impact on children and families afraid to even go to school, church or work," Jozef said. The administration called Friday's decision a victory, asserting that the migrants granted parole had been poorly vetted. Ending the parole programs "will be a necessary return to common-sense policies, a return to public safety and a return to America First," Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. [[nid:718316]] While many of those with parole status are at risk of deportation, at least 250,000 had pending applications for another legal status, according to Karen Tumlin, director of the Justice Action Center, one of the groups suing over the parole termination. Those applications had been frozen by Trump's administration but the freeze was lifted this week, said Tumlin, adding: "Those should be processed right now." Migrants with parole status reacted to Friday's decision with sadness and disappointment. Fermin Padilla, 32, waited two years in Chile to receive parole status and paid for his work permit. "We complied with all the requirements the United States government asked for," said Padilla, who lives in Austin, Texas, and delivers Amazon packages. "Now I'm left without security because we don't know what will happen. We're without anything after so much sacrifice. It's not fair." Retired university professor Wilfredo Sanchez, 73, has had parole status for a year and a half, living in Denver with his US citizen daughter, a doctor. "I was alone in Venezuela, with diabetes and hypertension," Sanchez said. "I have been relaxed here, happy with (my daughter), her husband and my grandkids. I have all my medical treatment up to date." "To return to Venezuela is to die, not just because of my medical conditions, but from loneliness," Sanchez added. Carlos Daniel Urdaneta, 30, has lived in Atlanta for three years with parole status, working in a restaurant, since coming to the United States to earn money to send to his ill mother in Venezuela. "If I have to work triple in my country, I will," said Urdaneta, whose wife and son are still in Venezuela. "I won't risk staying here undocumented with this government."
