By Nate Raymond
BOSTON (Reuters) -A federal judge is set to consider on Monday whether to extend an order blocking President Donald Trump’s plan to bar foreign nationals from entering the United States to study at Harvard University.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs during a hearing in Boston will weigh whether to issue an injunction barring Trump’s administration from implementing his latest bid to curtail Harvard’s ability to host international students while the university’s lawsuit challenging the restrictions plays out.
Almost 6,800 international students attended Harvard in its most recent school year, making up about 27% of the student population of the prestigious school located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. China and India are among the top countries of origin for these students.
The judge scheduled the hearing after issuing a temporary restraining order on June 6 preventing the administration from implementing a proclamation that Trump had signed a day earlier.
His administration has launched a multifront attack on the oldest and wealthiest U.S. university, freezing billions of dollars in grants and other funding and proposing to end its tax-exempt status, prompting a series of legal challenges.
Harvard argues that the administration is retaliating against it in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections against government abridgment of free speech for refusing to accede to its demands to control the school’s governance, curriculum and the ideology of its faculty and students.
It has filed two separate lawsuits before Burroughs seeking to unfreeze $2.5 billion in funding and to prevent Trump’s administration from blocking the ability of international students to attend the university.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on May 22 announced that her department was immediately revoking Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, the governmental mechanism that allows it to enroll foreign students.
Her action was almost immediately blocked by Burroughs. While the homeland security department has since shifted to challenging Harvard’s certification through a lengthier administrative process, Burroughs at a May 29 hearing said she planned to issue a “broad” injunction to maintain the status quo.
A week later, though, Trump signed his proclamation, which cited national security concerns to contend that Harvard is “no longer a trustworthy steward of international student and exchange visitor programs.”
The proclamation suspended the entry of foreign nationals to study at Harvard or participate in exchange visitor programs for an initial period of six months and directed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to consider whether to revoke visas of international students already enrolled at Harvard.
Harvard has asked Burroughs, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, to block Trump’s directive.
The university has said the administration unconstitutionally “sought to sever Harvard from its international students, with the inevitable and intended effect of wreaking havoc on the Harvard community, throwing into disarray every aspect of campus life.”
In court papers, the U.S. Justice Department urged Burroughs not to lump Trump’s proclamation in with the judge’s consideration of Noem’s actions, as it did not ban existing students and Trump relied on different legal authority for his order.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Will Dunham)
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