Harvard beat President Trump on Tuesday, with the administration retreating on plans to make foreign students have to attend at least one class in person this fall or else risk losing their visas and facing deportation.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had announced the new policy last week, saying if schools move to online classes amid the coronavirus pandemic, there’s no need for their foreign students to be here, since they can take the courses anywhere in the world.
But amid massive outrage, the government caved, telling a federal judge Tuesday that it was revoking the new policy.
The administration lawyer didn’t say why it canceled the policy, but Judge Allison D. Burroughs praised both the government and the lawyers for Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who’d sued to block the policy, for reaching a deal.
“The government has agreed to rescind the July 6, 2020, policy directive, and the Frequently Asked Questions, the FAQs, that were released the next day,” she said in a virtual hearing. “They’ve also agreed to rescind any implementation of the directive. They will return to the status quo.”
It was a rare retreat on immigration for the Trump administration, which has suffered its share of defeats in the courts, but doesn’t often cave to public pressure.
ICE didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry on the decision, and the government’s lawyer didn’t offer an explanation during the hearing with Judge Burroughs.
In usual times, foreign students must take at least some in-person classes.
Those rules were strengthened after the 2001 terrorist attacks, which saw one of the hijackers come on a valid student visa but never show up at school. He would later pilot the plane that struck the Pentagon.
When the coronavirus hit, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which runs the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, announced a waiver, allowing students to stay on valid visas even if all of their coursework was online.
Last week ICE announced an update for the fall semester, saying that online-only students didn’t need to be in the U.S. and should leave — though if they wanted to transfer to another school that did allow in-person classes, that was allowed.
The new rules applied both to students already here, and to students planning to arrive for the fall semester, who would have had their entry blocked by border officers.
Colleges and universities, facing the loss of billions of dollars, and arguing hardship for themselves and the affected students, protested the new policy.
Harvard led a lawsuit in Boston, while a number of Democrat-led states from New York to California also sued.
There are 1.1 million people on foreign student visas in the U.S. — but most of those wouldn’t have been affected by the policy, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.
More than 200,000 of those visa holders are actually here on extended internship and would be exempt. Most of the others are likely attending schools that do plan at least some in-person classes, CIS said.
The organization calculated that perhaps just 70,000 students may have been affected.
