Harvard, MIT sue Trump administration over policy for foreign students

Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have filed suit to block a new Trump administration policy that would force foreign students taking online-only courses this fall to return home, according to a report.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a directive Monday for F-1 visa-holding students to return to their home countries if they are enrolled in an online-only course load, CNN reported.

In March, ICE made an exception to an existing rule that students with these visas must attend classes in person and said the allowance would be in effect throughout the pandemic.

Now, “ICE’s action leaves hundreds of thousands of international students with no
educational options within the United States,” the Massachusetts federal lawsuit from Wednesday alleges. “Just weeks from the start of the fall semester, these students are largely unable to transfer to universities providing on-campus instruction, notwithstanding ICE’s suggestion that they might do so to avoid removal from the country.”

And for those students who do return home, taking online courses will be “impossible, impracticable, prohibitively expensive, and/or dangerous,” the court papers say.