After the Trump Administration announced a new rule allowing for the possible deportation of foreign students, several elite universities have filed a lawsuit against the administration, according to USA Today.
As part of the Trump Administration’s widespread crackdown on immigration amidst the coronavirus pandemic, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced a new policy that would allow for the deportation of any foreign students whose schools are not holding in-person classes in the coming academic year.
In response, several universities, including Harvard and MIT, announced a lawsuit to block the policy. The president of Harvard, Lawrence Bacow, who has a history of defending illegal aliens at his university, falsely called President Trump’s new policy “cruel” and “reckless.” In the lawsuit filing, Harvard admits that up to 5,000 of its 23,000 student body are in the United States on F-1 visas, while MIT said the same applied to 4,000 of its 11,500 students.
The move is part of President Trump’s push to reopen most of America’s schools in the fall. Even though the coronavirus pandemic has already peaked, and the mortality rate continues to plummet, some institutions are still insisting on remaining locked down. Harvard most recently announced that it would hold all of its classes entirely online for the 2020-2021 academic year, while tuition costs would remain the same. President Trump also announced that he is considering withholding federal funds from any public schools that do not reopen in the fall.