A federal judge in California has blocked the Trump administration’s move to revoke the legal statuses of thousands of international students across nationwide universities.
The injunction—which also stops the administration from arresting or detaining foreign-born students on the basis of immigration status—comes after the Trump administration revoked and then reinstated the legal status of 4,700 international students with little explanation beginning in March, NBC News reported.
District Judge Jeffrey White, nominated by President George W. Bush, blasted Trump officials for having “wreaked havoc” on students’ lives on Thursday. In his ruling, he wrote that the injunction should give the plaintiffs a “measure of stability and certainty that they will be able to continue their studies or their employment without the threat of re-termination hanging over their heads.”
The plaintiffs include foreign nationals who were admitted into the U.S. through the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) overseen by the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—led by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem—delivered a letter to Harvard University on Thursday announcing the termination of the school’s international student authorization under the SEVP.
Although the DHS has since restored the legal statuses of many foreign students, the department signaled that its crackdown on universities is only getting started.
This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus. It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments… pic.twitter.com/12hJWd1J86
— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) May 22, 2025
“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Noem wrote on X. “It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments.”
She added, “Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”
Judge White wrote that the Trump administration’s crusade “is a uniform policy that uniformly wreaked havoc not only on the lives of Plaintiffs here but on similarly situated F-1 nonimmigrants across the United States and continues do so.”
White called the administration’s policy changes a “game of whack-a-mole” for the court system.
“At each turn in this and similar litigation across the nation, Defendants have abruptly changed course to satisfy courts’ expressed concerns,” White said. “It is unclear how this game of whack-a-mole will end unless Defendants are enjoined from skirting their own mandatory regulations.”
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