A far-left federal judge has temporarily restrained the Trump administration from revoking certification for Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP).
Allison Burroughs, of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, agreed with the far-left university that revoking the certification would harm the school.
Appointed by former President Barack Hussein Obama, Burroughs delivered the temporary restraining order in a terse, one-page ruling.
DHS Letter
Burroughs’ leap to defend Harvard came after the university filed a lawsuit to stop the revocation, which it learned about yesterday in a letter from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. She acted only after Harvard refused to comply with a request for records.
“As I explained to you in my April letter, it is a privilege to enroll foreign students, and it is also a privilege to employ aliens on campus,” she wrote:
All universities must comply with Department of Homeland Security [DHS] requirements, including reporting requirements under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program regulations, to maintain this privilege. As a result of your refusal to comply with multiple requests to provide the Department of Homeland Security pertinent information while perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas sympathies, and employs racist “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies, you have lost this privilege.
Revoking the certification meant that foreign students — some 6,000 of them — could not receive the F-1 and J-1 visas necessary to matriculate there. F-1 visas permit foreigners to study at American universities. J-1 visas permit foreigners to participate in exchange programs.
Because the university did not comply with Noem’s first request for records, she revoked the certification, but said Harvard would be recertified if it provided them within 72 hours.
DHS wanted to see five years of records, including video, for foreign students involved in the following:
- “Illegal activity”;
- “Dangerous or violent activity”;
- “Threats to other students or university personnel”;
- “Deprivation of rights of other classmates or university personnel”;
- “Disciplinary records”;
- “Protest activity.”
“Harvard brought these consequences upon themselves,” Noem told Fox News:
They have promoted and allowed violent activity on campus. They have allowed antisemitism, participation with CCP and Chinese infiltration and influence on their campus, and they haven’t protected their students.
So we have given them multiple opportunities to share criminal activity with us, backgrounds on these students, to let us conduct the oversight into this program that is our responsibility. And they have refused to do so.
Noem noted that the revocation meant that foreign students at Harvard would have to find another school.
“We condemn this unlawful and unwarranted action,” hate-Trump Harvard President Alan Garber said:
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.
Garber also claimed that the university did respond to the government’s request for information.
“If only Harvard cared this much about ending the scourge of anti-American, antisemitic, pro-terrorist agitators on their campus they wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with,” White House spokesman Abigail Jackson said:
Harvard should spend their time and resources on creating a safe campus environment instead of filing frivolous lawsuits.
The Usual Lawsuit
Harvard sued this morning, claiming in the 72-page filing that the administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which regulates how the government makes and issues rules and regulations.
“This revocation is a blatant violation of the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause, and the Administrative Procedure Act,” Harvard claims:
It is 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. The government’s actions are unlawful for other equally clear and pernicious reasons. They disregard the government’s own regulations — under which Harvard should remain certified to host F-1 and J-1 visa holders. They depart from decades of settled practice and come without rational explanation. And they were carried out abruptly without any of the robust procedures the government has established to prevent just this type of upheaval to thousands of students’ lives.
Harvard frets that the administration wants to wipe out 25 percent of the student body “with the stroke of a pen.”
“Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,” the lawsuit avers. As well, it continues:
the government’s unlawful revocation of Harvard’s longstanding SEVP status is already causing the University immediate and irreparable harm and will lead to a cascade of negative consequences affecting Harvard and its community.
The 10-count lawsuit alleges First Amendment retaliation, viewpoint discrimination, and eight other counts under the APA.
Of course, Burroughs agreed with Harvard. The university, she ruled, has shown it “will sustain immediate and irreparable injury.”
