Abstract: Because of the new policy for foreign students promulgated by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), it has recently been jointly prosecuted by major universities across the United States. This new policy requires that all students in the fall semester of this year's online courses leave the country or transfer to schools with face-to-face courses, otherwise they will face repatriation. On Tuesday (July 15), the Trump administration finally could not bear the pressure, announcing the cancellation of this new deal for international students.
Earlier, the new policy for international students promulgated by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau (ICE) attracted public anger and was recently jointly prosecuted by major universities across the United States. This new policy requires that all students in the fall semester of this year's online courses leave the country or transfer to schools with face-to-face courses, otherwise they will face repatriation. On Tuesday (July 15), the Trump administration finally could not bear the pressure, announcing the cancellation of this new deal for international students.
The appeal decision was announced at the beginning of a federal lawsuit hearing in Boston. In this lawsuit, Harvard University and MIT jointly sued the US Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency for the New Deal.
U.S. District Court Judge Allison Burroughs said at the hearing that the Federal Bureau of Immigration agreed to cancel the New Deal issued on July 6 and return to the status quo. An attorney representing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the judge’s description was correct.
The announcement reassures thousands of foreign students who may be deported, as well as hundreds of universities that have managed to reformulate their fall semester plans.
According to the New Deal, students who only take online courses in the fall semester will not be able to obtain a visa to the United States or maintain the current visa. Students who are currently in the United States may even be repatriated. Later, under the pressure of strong public opinion, ICE made some changes to the new visa regulations. Only international students who are online students can retain their student status, but they are still not allowed to stay in the United States.
This policy triggered strong opposition from major universities and local governments. Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Massachusetts took the lead in filing a lawsuit on the 8th, requesting the federal court to suspend the new visa regulations. The lawsuit wrote: There is no indication that this move by ICE takes into account the health of students, university staff and the community, or that the university has no other choice to offer courses to many international students.
The lawsuit soon received support from more than 200 signatures. Universities say that this policy will threaten the safety of students and damage the economic interests of the school. Many schools rely on tuition fees from international students, and the New Deal will cost some schools millions of dollars in income.
In addition to the lawsuits at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the new policy also triggered at least seven federal lawsuits from other universities and state governments.
17 states and the Washington, DC, capital have filed a lawsuit in the federal district court in Boston, Massachusetts, seeking to prevent this new regulation from taking effect. The complaint alleges that the US government took "ruthless, abrupt and illegal actions to expel international students during the epidemic", which violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
The Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who led the lawsuit, issued a statement saying that the new regulations introduced by the Trump administration forced international students to choose between student status and personal safety, and did not give a reasonable explanation.