Judge blocks Trump administration’s attempt to crush Harvard’s foreign student enrollment

A federal judge on Friday barred the Trump administration from rescinding Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students, granting the school’s emergency request to stave off “immediate and irreparable injury.”

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs granted Harvard’s requested restraining order just hours after the university sued the Department of Homeland Security, accusing the administration of unconstitutional retaliation for refusing to capitulate to President Donald Trump’s demands.

Burroughs said the immediate restraining order was necessary because without it, Harvard “will sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hear from all parties.”

The judge, an appointee of Barack Obama, set a May 29 hearing to consider a longer-term block of the administration’s actions. For now, the move likely forestalls an imminent crisis affecting Harvard’s current student population, some of whom are slated to graduate in days.

Earlier in the day, Harvard’s president denounced the administration’s action as illegal.

“We condemn this unlawful and unwarranted action,” the university’s president, Alan Garber, said in a statement. “It imperils the futures of thousands of students and scholars across Harvard and serves as a warning to countless others at colleges and universities throughout the country who have come to America to pursue their education and fulfill their dreams.”

In a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in Boston, Harvard said the Trump administration’s move was abrupt and will have a “devastating effect for Harvard and more than 7,000 visa holders.” International students make up about 27 percent of Harvard’s total enrollment with more than 6,700 international students enrolled at the university as of fall 2024.

“With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body,” the lawsuit said.

The move against Harvard is the latest bid by the Trump administration to target international students in pursuit of its broader immigration agenda. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has tried to deport foreign activists at elite universities, saying their presence in the United States conflicts with foreign policy goals. And the Department of Homeland Security threatened the legal status of thousands of full-time students, terminating their records in a key immigration database, until courts across the country forced them to retreat.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem notified Harvard University on Thursday that the university’s certification for the Student and Exchange Visitor Program is revoked, following an extensive records request from the Department of Homeland Security that Noem alleges Harvard has not complied with. Lawyers on behalf of the university said it is not required by law to turn over much of the information DHS demanded about student visa holders on its campus.

DHS had ordered the university to submit records on what Noem says are “illegal and violent activities” from international students by April 30. On Thursday, DHS said the university failed to comply and demanded all records from Harvard about “illegal,” “dangerous” or “violent” activity on or off campus “by a nonimmigrant student enrolled in Harvard University in the last five years.”

The agency also wants disciplinary records and all audio and video footage of protests involving these students over the same time period.

The SEVP certification program is what allows institutions to enroll foreign students. Harvard has been eligible to participate in it for more than 70 years without any threats to its certification.

The new lawsuit called the action “a blatant violation of the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause and the Administrative Procedure Act.” Lawyers on behalf of the institution also called it “the latest act by the government in clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students.”

“As we pursue legal remedies, we will do everything in our power to support our students and scholars,” Garber said.

Harvard’s legal team designated the newly filed suit as related to one it filed last month challenging a halt the Trump administration put on $2.2 billion in research funding the school receives. The university broadened its suit last week, challenging blocks to another $450 million in grant funding and noting a recent statement by Trump that his administration plans to strip Harvard of its tax exempt status.

By designating the new lawsuit as an offshoot of the old one, the case was assigned to the same judge: Burroughs.

Burroughs, who also handled the major affirmative action suit that led to the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling striking down affirmative action at colleges nationwide, has had only one hearing on the funding-focused case. She has set a major argument session over that suit for July 21.

Neither side has sought emergency relief from the court in that case, perhaps because Harvard’s endowment of over $53 billion makes it difficult for the university to claim that it faces an imminent calamity due to the Trump administration’s halt of research funding.

However, the move Noem announced Thursday to strip the school of its ability to enroll existing and new foreign students threatens to cause a major disruption for the university and its more than 7,000 foreign students and academics.

Harvard also added a new law firm for the suit over the foreign-student issue: Chicago-based Jenner & Block. It appears to have replaced the school’s longtime, Boston-based law firm Ropes & Gray on the new case, although that firm is continuing on the funding-related case.

Among the school’s new lawyers: Ian Gershengorn, a former acting solicitor general under President Barack Obama. That could be another sign that Harvard’s attorneys expect the foreign-student case to move faster than the original one over funding and to reach the Supreme Court in short order.