A district judge in Boston has blocked the Trump administration’s ban on Harvard’s international students from entering the United States after the Ivy League university argued the move was illegal.
Harvard had asked the judge, Allison Burrough, to block the ban, pending further litigation, arguing Trump had violated federal law by failing to back up his claims that the students posed a threat to national security.
“The Proclamation denies thousands of Harvard’s students the right to come to this country to pursue their education and follow their dreams, and it denies Harvard the right to teach them. Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,” the school said in a filing to the judge.
The filing also argued that the national security argument was flawed as the ban did not stop the same people from entering the country, it only barred them from entering to attend Harvard.
Harvard amended its earlier lawsuit, which it had filed amid a broader dispute with the Republican president, to challenge the ban, which Trump issued on Wednesday in a proclamation.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson earlier called Harvard “a hotbed of anti-American, antisemitic, pro-terrorist agitators”, claims that the school has previously denied.
“Harvard’s behavior has jeopardized the integrity of the entire US student and exchange visitor visa system and risks compromising national security. Now it must face the consequences of its actions,” Jackson said in a statement.
The suspension was intended to be initially for six months but can be extended. Trump’s proclamation also directs the state department to consider revoking academic or exchange visas of any current Harvard students who meet his proclamation’s criteria.
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 and proposing to end its tax-exempt status, prompting a series of legal challenges.
Harvard argues the administration is retaliating against it for refusing to accede to demands to control the school’s governance, curriculum and the ideology of its faculty and students.
Trump’s directive came a week after Burroughs announced she would issue a broad injunction blocking the administration from revoking Harvard’s ability to enrol international students, who make up about a quarter of its student body.
Harvard said in Thursday’s court filing that the proclamation was “a patent effort to do an end-run around this Court’s order”.
The university sued after the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, announced on 22 May that her department was immediately revoking Harvard’s student and exchange visitor program certification, which allows it to enrol foreign students.
Noem’s action was temporarily blocked almost immediately by Burroughs. On the eve of a hearing before her last week, the department changed course and said it would instead challenge Harvard’s certification through a lengthier administrative process.
Wednesday’s two-page directive from Trump said Harvard had “demonstrated a history of concerning foreign ties and radicalism” and had “extensive entanglements with foreign adversaries”, including China.
It said Harvard had seen a “drastic rise in crime in recent years while failing to discipline at least some categories of conduct violations on campus”, and had failed to provide sufficient information to the homeland security department about foreign students’ “known illegal or dangerous activities”.
The school in Thursday’s court filing said those claims were unsubstantiated.