Declaring that “without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,” Harvard University is suing the Trump administration over its decision to ban it from enrolling foreign students.
Just hours after the lawsuit filed this morning, a federal judge granted an emergency restraining order, blocking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from acting on the ban and restoring Harvard’s ability to host foreign students.
The university is challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s action to revoke its authority on multiple fronts. In its lawsuit, Harvard said that the department did not follow the regulatory process for terminating colleges’ certification from the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. It called the action a violation of the First Amendment and an attempt to squelch academic freedom. And it accused the administration of exceeding its own authority.
“The revocation is quintessential arbitrary, irrational, and unilateral executive action,” the suit says, which “imposed a penalty that is wholly unprecedented, and which it has no authority to impose under the circumstances.”
At a college where more than one out of four students is from overseas, blocking Harvard’s ability to enroll international students would undermine its academics, its research, and its institutional culture. The lawsuit asks for emergency relief.
In a written response, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of homeland security for public affairs, said “This lawsuit seeks to kneecap the President’s constitutionally vested powers.
“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments. The Trump administration is committed to restoring common sense to our student visa system; no lawsuit, this or any other, is going to change that.”
The administration’s decision to rescind Harvard’s ability to enroll international students is a major escalation in its battle with one of the nation’s premier institutions. Revocation means that the university will not be able to enroll new international students and existing foreign students must transfer to another institution or lose their legal status to stay in the United States, although the judge’s order temporarily freezes the suspension.
And Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem suggested that the department could weaponize the student-visa system against other colleges if they did not follow the administration’s agenda.
“Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country,” she said in a press release announcing the action on Thursday.
Noem accused the university of “fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus.”
“Many” of the “agitators” who took part in campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war were international students, she suggested.
In a statement, Harvard called the government’s action “unlawful.”
“This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission.”
Legal experts said the government has likely violated its own rules for rescinding a college’s ability to admit international students and that they expect Harvard to sue.
According to Harvard’s fact book on student enrollment, the university enrolled 6,800 international students in the 2024-25 academic year, or almost 28 percent of its total student body. The university’s international office reports that it also hosted an additional 4,531 foreign scholars, some of whom could also be affected by the revocation.
Noem’s action pulls Harvard’s certification to take part in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. More than 7,400 colleges and schools are certified through the system, which was set up to track foreign students in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Institutions can lose their authority to participate in the program, but in practice revocations are relatively rare and typically only occur in cases of college closures, significant changes in academic programs, and fraud — not as part of a broader pressure campaign against a college.
“I’m confident in 40 years of practicing law, I’ve never seen a whole program revoked in a sweeping way,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a retired professor of practice at Cornell Law School.
Yale-Loehr, an immigration-law expert, said the Department of Homeland Security appears to have not followed its own rules in rescinding Harvard’s certification. While the department threatened last month to pull Harvard’s status if it did not comply with an investigation into its international student body, revocation is a lengthy process that requires the government to file notice of its plans to withdrawal its approval. Colleges have a month to respond and can later appeal the decision.
The department “just can’t issue a letter or press release stating that a school can no longer enroll international students,” Yale-Loehr said.
In her letter to Harvard, Noem said the university could have the “opportunity” to regain its status if it replied within 72 hours to a request for disciplinary records as well as video or audio footage of international students who had taken part in illegal activity, violence, threats to students or employees, or protest activity on or off campus over the past five years.
The Trump administration has terminated billions of dollars in federal grants from Harvard after the university refused to agree to a series of demands that would have given the government far-reaching powers to shape admissions, diversity programming, and other campus operations. In April, the university filed a lawsuit against the government, protesting financial and regulatory penalties.
International students have also been a target of administrative action. In April, officials terminated the immigration status of thousands of foreign students, often on the basis of minor legal infractions. It was forced to backtrack and restore students’ status after a wave of lawsuits challenged the mass cancellations. Last week it warned of a fresh round of deportations aimed at visa holders who are late in reporting their employment on optional practical training, or OPT, the postgraduate work program.
American colleges recruit international students for their academic talent, particularly in the sciences, where more than 40 percent of doctoral students are on visas. They have also become an important source of tuition revenue for cash-strapped institutions — although that may have not been as relevant at Harvard with its endowment of more than $50 billion.
The university said it was fully committed to maintaining its ability to enroll international students and was working to provide guidance to students and scholars.
Yale-Loehr said Harvard’s foreign students should not automatically lose their legal status and should be given time to transfer, change to another visa, or leave the country.
Even so, the administration’s action comes at a tricky and tenuous time, said Dan H. Berger, who leads the academic and medical-immigration team at the law firm Green and Spiegel. Many international students return to their home countries at the end of the academic year, and if the issue is not resolved, it could affect their ability to come back to the United States. With Harvard’s commencement scheduled for May 29, new graduates are in or are beginning the time-sensitive process of applying for OPT; a delay in approvals could cost them a job and force them to leave the country.
And the uncertainty could put incoming students in limbo at the height of the summer student-visa application season. “Anyone who has their consular interview today or tomorrow, we don’t know what will happen,” Berger said.
The administration’s retaliation against Harvard could also have a ripple effect on the 1.1 million international students studying on American campuses, particularly given Noem’s admonition that other colleges could be vulnerable to government action. “Just as international students across the world are preparing for fall, immigration law and policy in the U.S. is in a state of enormous flux, week to week, day to day,” said Elora Mukherjee, a law professor at Columbia University and director of its Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. “I have no doubt this is instilling fear.”
