US judge blocks Trump ban on foreign students at Harvard

NEW YORK: A federal judge on Friday indefinitely paused Donald Trump’s bid to block Harvard from enrolling foreign students as the US president said a “deal” with the Ivy League school was in the works.

The order by District Judge Allison Burroughs will allow international students to continue to attend the elite universtity while a lawsuit filed by Harvard plays out in the courts.

Trump, who has cut federal grants for Harvard and tried a host of different tactics to block the institution from hosting international students, said that his administration has been holding negotiations with Harvard.

“Many people have been asking what is going on with Harvard University and their largescale improprieties that we have been addressing, looking for a solution,“ Trump said in a post Friday on Truth Social.

“We have been working closely with Harvard, and it is very possible that a Deal will be announced over the next week or so,“ he said. “If a Settlement is made on the basis that is currently being discussed, it will be ‘mindbogglingly’ HISTORIC, and very good for our Country.”

Trump did not provide any details about the purported “deal.”

The Trump administration has sought to remove Harvard from an electronic student immigration registry and instructed embassies to deny visas to international students hoping to attend the Massachusetts-based university.

Harvard has sued the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies to block the efforts, arguing that they were illegal and unconstitutional.

Harvard previously secured two temporary restraining orders from Burroughs against the government’s move to bar international students, and the judge extended it with a preliminary injunction on Friday.

International students accounted for 27 percent of total enrollment at Harvard in the 2024-2025 academic year and are a major source of income.

In court filings, Harvard argued that Trump’s actions were “retribution for Harvard’s 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.”

Alongside the campaign against foreign students, the Trump administration has also cut around $3.2 billion of federal grants and contracts benefiting the university and pledged to exclude it from any future federal funding.

Harvard has been at the forefront of Trump’s campaign against top universities after it defied his calls to submit to oversight of its curriculum, staffing, student recruitment and “viewpoint diversity.”

Trump and his allies claim that Harvard and other prestigious universities are unaccountable bastions of liberal, anti-conservative bias and anti-Semitism.