Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump Admin From Banning Harvard International Students; Judge Blocking Trump’s Harvard Efforts Was Previously Overturned By SCOTUS For Pro-Harvard Ruling

Federal judge temporarily blocks Trump admin from banning Harvard international students:

A Massachusetts judge has ordered the federal government not to make any permanent changes to Harvard University’s student visa program.

Judge Allison Burroughs issued a preliminary injunction Thursday morning as Harvard University lawyers squared off with the Trump administration in a Boston federal courtroom over the government’s attempt to prevent the prestigious school from admitting international students.

“I want to maintain the status quo,” in allowing the school to resume accepting foreign students and visa holders, Burroughs said, telling the sides to hash out an agreement to temporarily halt the freeze on Harvard’s student visa program.

“It doesn’t need to be draconian, but I want to make sure it’s worded in such a way that nothing changes,” she said, with Harvard’s lead attorney Ian Gershengorn telling the judge he doesn’t want any “shenanigans” to take place once the order is set.

Also on Thursday, Harvard president Alan Garber jabbed at President Trump’s crackdown on international student enrollment during his remarks at the Ivy League school’s graduation ceremony.

“Members of the Class of 2025, from down the street, across the country and around the world … just as it should be,” he said.

Hours before the pitched battle got underway, the administration filed a legal notice giving Harvard 30 days to make its case to remain eligible to enroll foreign visa holders through the Student and Exchange Visitor Program.

Trump said Wednesday that Cambridge University should reduce by half its number of international students to make Harvard “great again” – suggesting a cap of 15% instead of the 27.2% currently on the rolls.

“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. —>READ MORE HERE

Judge Blocking Trump’s Harvard Efforts Was Previously Overturned By SCOTUS For Pro-Harvard Ruling:

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, who recently blocked the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) effort to stop Harvard University’s enrollment of foreign students, is the same judge who was overturned by the Supreme Court for siding with the school’s racist affirmative action policies.

Burroughs, an Obama appointee serving in Massachusetts, has litigated several cases involving Harvard. In 2019, she ruled in favor of Harvard when they were sued by Students for Fair Admission over discrimination against Asian students. The Supreme Court overturned her decision in 2023, declaring race-based affirmative action unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment.

Burroughs oversaw MIT and Harvard’s lawsuit against the Trump administration in 2020. The universities sued the DHS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when they tried to send home international students who were only taking online classes at American universities during the Covid-19 pandemic. ICE later rolled back this policy without a ruling from Burroughs.

Burroughs, at the request of Harvard’s attorneys, is also overseeing Harvard’s lawsuit against the Trump administration for pulling the university’s federal funding. On May 23, she issued a temporary restraining order blocking the effort.

Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, gave Harvard 30 days to rebut the DHS’s alleged grounds for withdrawing certification from the school’s Student Exchange and Visitor Program. In a Wednesday letter to the university director of immigration services, Maureen Martin, Lyons cited Harvard’s failure to comply with DHS student records requests, failure to curtail violence and antisemitism on campus, and ongoing national security concerns as reasons for the withdrawal. Harvard has been a target of the administration for a variety of infractions since Trump’s second term began. —>READ MORE HERE

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