On Wednesday night, Trump invoked national security powers to impose a six-month block on student visa holders from entering the country to study at Harvard. He also said Secretary of State Marco Rubio would review the status of current international students case by case to determine whether their visas should be revoked.
“Our adversaries, including the People’s Republic of China, try to take advantage of American higher education by exploiting the student visa program for improper purposes and by using visiting students to collect information at elite universities in the United States,” Trump wrote Wednesday, referring to allegations the Chinese government poaches scientific advancements from American universities.
Trump’s actions were the latest escalation in the administration’s aggressive attacks against elite universities, which he has accuses of fomenting anti-American ideology and failing to address instances of antisemitism. His push has intersected with his administration’s efforts to limit immigration and ramp up deportations.
In particular, Trump has trained his ire on Harvard, which has resisted his demands and filed lawsuits against some of his actions.
Last month, Trump dramatically ramped up his assault on the college when his administration moved to prevent it from enrolling foreign students. Those there already, he said, must transfer.
Harvard sued, and won a court order providing some temporary protections. That led the administration to change tactics with Wednesday night’s filing, now on national-security grounds.
Harvard’s response Thursday in federal court was an amended version of that previous suit. In the new filing, Harvard’s lawyers wrote neither approach has any basis in the law.
In urging US District Judge Allison D. Burroughs in Boston to block Trump’s plan, Harvard argued that while the statute the president invoked gives him the authority to protect the country from a class of aliens whose entry would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States,” it doesn’t apply to an action that singles out Harvard.
“The president’s actions thus are not undertaken to protect the ‘interests of the United States,’ but instead to pursue a government vendetta against Harvard,” the amended complaint says.
Harvard said the proclamation would have a devastating impact on the school, throwing countless academic programs, research laboratories, clinics and courses supported by international students into disarray.
“With no basis in law, the proclamation denies thousands of Harvard’s students the right to come to this country to pursue their education and follow their dreams, and it denies Harvard the right to teach them,” the suit says. ” Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard.”
International students make up more than 27 percent of Harvard’s total enrollment.
Governor Maura Healey, who graduated from Harvard, said in a statement that Trump is “punishing our students and hurting the American economy, all as part of his agenda to silence anyone who disagrees with him. And he won’t stop at Harvard.”
Brooke Hauser and Matt Stout of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Sean Cotter can be reached at sean.cotter@globe.com. Follow him @cotterreporter. Shelley Murphy can be reached at shelley.murphy@globe.com. Follow her @shelleymurph.