- Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology filed a lawsuit Wednesday against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement over a new rule that threatened many international students with deportation.
- In a statement on Wednesday afternoon, Northeastern University said it was supporting Harvard and MIT in its lawsuit.
- The new policy said students whose courses no longer had an in-person component due to the COVID-19 pandemic would lose their permission to be in the US and face deportation.
- President Donald Trump singled out Harvard on Tuesday, criticizing the university for not planning to bring back all its students in the fall as it seeks to fully reopen the US despite rising coronavirus infections.
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Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northeastern University sued the Trump administration over an order that strips international students of permission to stay in the US if their courses are taught only online.
Harvard and MIT filed a lawsuit Wednesday morning against the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A copy of the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, hosted on the Harvard website.
The lawsuit follows new ICE guidance that students on F-1 visas would no longer be allowed to remain in the US unless they had in-person classes to attend.
The order means students taking online-only classes will have to transfer to classes with some in-person instruction or leave the country. Students enrolled in online-only courses located in other countries will be denied entry into the U.S., according to press release from ICE on Tuesday.
“The order fell without warning — its cruelty surpassed only by its recklessness,” Harvard President Lawrence Buckow wrote in an internal email. cited by the Harvard Crimson campus newspaper. “We believe the ICE order is bad public policy and we believe it is illegal.”
Many schools are not planning a mass return of students to campuses in the fall. ICE's guidance revoked the students' temporary residency permit issued earlier in the pandemic.
Elite universities are seeking to block the enforcement of the new policy, which was announced on Monday. They also asked that it be permanently discontinued and declared null and void.
Among its arguments, Harvard said taking online courses would be impossible for many students, including those living in countries such as civil war-torn Syria or blackout-ridden Ethiopia.
The institution pointed out that many of its staff and faculty members were over the age of 60 and therefore among the groups most at risk of the disease should it become fully open and hit by an epidemic.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday directly criticized Harvard for its plan to bring only up to 40 percent of undergraduates back to campus and teach classes online during the fall, as coronavirus cases continued to rise in the US.
“I think it's ridiculous, I think it's an easy way out, and I think they should be ashamed of themselves, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said.
In a statement on Wednesday afternoon, Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, said it would join Harvard and MIT in its lawsuit.
“This new guidance from Homeland Security creates chaos for international students and has the effect of weakening American higher education – one of our nation's strengths,” Northeastern University President Joseph Aoun wrote in a statement.
The University of California also announced on Wednesday her own plans to file a lawsuit against the federal government “for violating the rights of the University and its students.”
“The lawsuit will seek a temporary restraining order and preliminary and permanent injunctive relief to prohibit ICE from executing an order that UC President Janet Napolitano called 'vicious, arbitrary and harmful to America,'” the statement said.
On Thursday, the University of Southern California announced it will offer a free in-person class to international students at risk of losing their visas due to new ICE regulations.
Rosie Perper contributed reporting.
