Federal judge blocks Trump administration's proclamation to suspend new foreign students at Harvard

Allison Burroughs, U.S. District Court Judge, temporarily restrained the Trump administration's decision to suspend visas for International Students. The decision comes shortly after the university urged the court to step in on an emergency basis to block the proclamation issued by the Trump administration a day prior.

This judgment is an extension of the earlier restraining order issued by the Obama-appointed Allison Burroughs. Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Tricia McLaughlin, in a mailed statement, said that the ruling "delays justice and seeks to kneecap the President's constitutionally vested powers". It has set a date for the hearing on the judgment in mid-June.

Earlier, on June 4, the Ivy League School filed a lawsuit claiming, "The Proclamation denies thousands of Harvard’s students the right to come to this country to pursue their education and follow their dreams, and it denies Harvard the right to teach them. Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard.”

This Presidential proclamation to ban visas for international students was the most recent development in the feud between President Trump and Harvard. President Trump's crackdown on the oldest university started following the University's reluctance to share audio-visual records of students who were participating in pro-Palestinian protests. Trump also froze approximately $2.6 billion in federal funding to the university earlier. The DHS also attempted to block Harvard's ability to enrol foreign students for the next academic year, which was subsequently blocked by a Federal Court.

Harvard President Alan Garber called the ban a retaliation "for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government's illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body."

In the brief judgment, Burroughs stated that it became imperative to intervene now or else the grand old institution would incur substantial damages. The next hearing in mid-June will decide the fate of the President's proclamation, whether it will be blocked indefinitely.