Harvard files complaint against Trump action blocking foreign students from attending the school

Harvard University is challenging President Trump’s move to block foreign students from coming to the United States to attend the Ivy League school, calling it illegal retaliation for Harvard’s rejection of White House demands.

In an amended complaint filed Thursday, Harvard called the president’s action an end-run around a previous court order. Last month, a federal judge blocked the Department of Homeland Security from revoking Harvard’s ability to host foreign students.

The filing attacks Trump’s legal justification for the action — a federal law allowing him to block a “class of aliens” deemed detrimental to the nation’s interests. Targeting only those who are coming to the U.S. to study at Harvard doesn’t qualify as a “class of aliens,” Harvard said in its filing.

“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 university wrote.

The amended complaint came in a lawsuit filed last month challenging the previous action from Homeland Security. A federal judge in Boston blocked the move after Harvard said it violated the school’s First Amendment rights. The new filing asks the same judge to block Trump’s latest action, too.

If Trump’s measure stands, it would block thousands of students who are scheduled to come to the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for summer and fall terms. International students make up about a quarter of the school’s student body.

“Harvard’s more than 7,000 F-1 and J-1 visa holders — and their dependents — have become pawns in the government’s escalating campaign of retaliation,” Harvard wrote.

The Trump administration is seeking to halt billions in federal funding to the school after Harvard rejected the government’s demands to change its disciplinary practices, end diversity, equity and inclusion programs and commission an external audit of some academic departments. 

The Trump administration has argued that amid last year’s pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, Harvard and other schools have not done enough to address antisemitism at their schools. Harvard has argued it is being punished for First Amendment-protected speech.