A federal judge in Massachusetts blocked a Trump administration rule that would have shortened the length of visas for international students, academics and foreign journalists.
The rule would have upended a long-running system that allows millions of international students in the United States to stay until they complete their studies.
The new rule would instead have capped the stay of a student, researcher, professor or other academic at four 4 years — a change that would significantly affect most Ph.D. students. The rule would also have restricted foreign students from getting a second degree of the same level, changing their field of studies or transferring to a different university.
Foreign journalists would also have been limited to visas of just 240 days. Students and journalists could apply for extensions, but approval is at the discretion of officials at the Department of Homeland Security, and a declined extension is unappealable.
Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, who was nominated to the court by President George W. Bush, ruled that the Trump administration’s reasoning for implementing the rule was so arbitrary that it was unlawful. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether it would appeal the ruling.
Judge Saylor wrote in a 48-page ruling that “damage to the higher education system and to the economy of the United States” from the rule was “likely to be catastrophic,” noting that the rule would discourage international students from attending U.S. universities. Judge Saylor noted that the Trump administration estimated “that compliance costs alone will likely total more than $250 million in the first year.”
“Notwithstanding the scale of the likely harm,” Judge Saylor wrote, “the government’s proffered rationales for the rule are exceptionally weak,” adding that the Trump administration’s claim “that the rule is necessary to safeguard national security borders on the absurd” and that officials “did not explain how a four-year cap will prevent individuals from obtaining visas by fraud.”
He continued, “As to journalists, D.H.S. makes no real effort even to defend the new rule on its merits — in fact, it did not offer any national security or fraud-and-abuse evidence, or indeed provide any reasoned explanation, at all.”
The government’s rationales for the rule were so weak, Judge Saylor wrote, that it “raises legitimate questions as to whether its real purpose is not to safeguard national security and protect our borders, but to achieve other, undisclosed, goals — such as, for example, asserting greater government control over academic institutions and the press.”
Judge Saylor also wrote that “the possibilities for abuse” in the process of applying for a visa extension were rampant.
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