Nearly 60 universities including Stanford, Yale, and Princeton have filed a legal brief supporting a lawsuit filed by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) last week against the Trump administration over its dangerous attack on international students. “The brief cites examples of students affected by the guidance,” Bloomberg News reports. “They include a Rice University student working on Covid-19 research and developing low-cost ventilators who would be forced out of the country.”
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policy that would force international students to either attend classes in person amid a pandemic or get out “forces international students to choose between pursuing their academic dreams or risking deportation, all the while throwing months of careful planning by colleges and universities into disarray,” attorney Ishan Bhabha said according to the report. The policy has been so reprehensible that advocates have reported at least eight lawsuits against it so far since ICE announced it a week ago.
Since California became the first state to sue over the ICE policy late last week, at least 18 other states and Washington, D.C. have joined in litigation against the Trump administration to seek an urgent halt to the policy.
“The Trump administration didn’t even attempt to explain the basis for this senseless rule, which forces schools to choose between keeping their international students enrolled and protecting the health and safety of their campuses,” Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said in a statement on Monday. She leads an effort of Washington, D.C. and 17 states including Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Like litigation filed by Harvard, MIT, and California, the lawsuit led by Healey “alleges that the federal government’s actions are arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion because they reverse previous guidance without explanation, input, or rationale—in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act—and fail to consider the need to protect public health and safety amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.” On Monday, New York also went at it alone against the administration, becoming the eighth lawsuit against the policy:
International students have been in a state of panic over ICE’s announcement, with some schools scrambling to find a safe way to enroll at least some students in an in-person class in order to comply with ICE’s policy. But it’s the policy itself that’s wrong and needlessly endangering both the education and lives of students. Anchita Dasgupta, a Brown University student, told The Washington Post: “My family is concerned I might get the virus. But that can’t even be a concern right now. I have to enroll in classes or I lose my visa status.”
“Statements issued by various university and education association presidents in announcing their plans to join the legal action against the new policy described ICE’s action with terms such as ‘policymaking at its worst,’ 'cruel and reckless,’ ‘horrifying,’ and ‘immensely misguided,’” MIT News reported. In a statement, MIT president L. Rafael Reif said: “MIT’s strength is its people—no matter where they come from.”
“I know firsthand the anxiety of arriving in this country as a student, excited to advance my education, but separated from my family by thousands of miles,” he said according to MIT News. “I also know that welcoming the world’s brightest, most talented and motivated students is an essential American strength.”