The Trump Administration announced a temporary halt to its recently-announced policy intending to deport foreign students whose schools hold only online classes, while other aspects of the plan are still being enforced, as reported by Politico.
Shortly after announcing the policy on July 6th, several lawsuits were filed by far-left institutions against the Trump Administration, including a lawsuit from Harvard and MIT, as well as 18 different state attorneys general, in an effort to block the policy.
The rule would have forced foreign students to go back to their home countries if their schools did not physically reopen in the fall, thus incentivizing a faster reopening for most universities if they wished to keep such students. Although the new version of the rule will not include active deportations, it has been reported that elements of the rule are still being enforced elsewhere.
The language of the rule remains in the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual, which still instructs the Department to “bar visas to students who will not attend any in-person classes in the U.S.” In addition, as the Ivy League schools Harvard and MIT noted in their most recent statement, “the government is enforcing the directive at airports and consulates around the world, turning students away” if their universities have chosen to remain closed in the fall.