Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump’s Order Curtailing Foreign Students at Harvard

The same federal judge also extended her block on another attempt by the administration to stop the university from issuing student visas.

A federal judge late Thursday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s latest effort to prevent Harvard from enrolling international students, stalling President Trump’s first bid to directly use the power of the presidency against the university.

Judge Allison D. Burroughs of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts also extended for about two weeks her previous order from May that prevented the Trump administration from blocking Harvard from issuing certain types of student visas.

The orders from Judge Burroughs were victories, if perhaps temporary ones, in Harvard’s battle with Mr. Trump, for whom the university has become a focal point in the administration’s effort to make higher education conform to his political agenda.

The White House proclamation blocked on Thursday had been issued just the day before. It was the third time in the past month that the Trump administration has tried to use its power to ban international enrollment at Harvard in what the university has said is a violation of its First Amendment rights. But it was the first to rely directly on Mr. Trump’s executive power rather than agency rules and actions, a sign of how personal the effort to inflict distress on the Ivy League university has become for him.

Judge Burroughs acted hours after Harvard asked her to block the order on Thursday evening. In its request, part of an ongoing lawsuit, the university also filed a new claim against the administration.

In court papers, Harvard accused the White House of trying to circumvent an earlier court order that had blocked the Department of Homeland Security from banning international enrollment at Harvard. The university said Mr. Trump had violated the law again by invoking the executive power of the presidency against the school when the agency’s efforts had failed.

Alan M. Garber, Harvard’s president, issued a statement shortly after the court filing saying that Harvard’s international office was reaching out to students and scholars who might be affected by the White House action.

He added that the university was developing “contingency plans” to ensure that international students and scholars could continue to pursue their work at Harvard this summer and through the coming academic year.

Harvard had yet to comment on the late-Thursday ruling. A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The latest filing, an amended complaint, followed a string of court actions by the university against the administration, part of a battle that began in April, when Harvard refused to comply with a list of federal demands.

The government asked, among other things, for Harvard to bar students hostile to American values and to allow an audit of faculty and students to measure “viewpoint diversity” at the school.

In response, the administration said it was pulling nearly $3 billion of the university’s federal contracts and grants.

The administration originally portrayed its focus on Harvard as an effort to combat campus antisemitism, but has broadened its crusade to include diversity, equity and inclusion programs as well as the school’s ties to China.

The president’s proclamation appeared to affect only newly arriving international students at Harvard, including about 300 first-year students who are set to begin classes this fall. It was unclear how many newly arriving graduate students are international.

Mr. Trump, in the same proclamation, also urged Secretary of State Marco Rubio to consider revoking current visas for Harvard students, a move that would affect the school’s entire international enrollment.

An estimated 5,000 international students are currently enrolled at Harvard, and a further 2,000 recent graduates are in the United States on visas permitting students to remain temporarily after graduation to work.

The earlier ban attempts had been issued by the Department of Homeland Security and were also temporarily blocked by Judge Burroughs.

Harvard’s amended complaint on Thursday argued that the law cited by the White House was not applicable. The law gives the president authority to protect the country from a class of “aliens” deemed detrimental to the United States. But rather than target a class, the Trump administration would allow the same international students who would be barred from Harvard to come the United States if they enrolled at a different campus, the complaint said.

Citing news media reports, Harvard’s complaint said that the administration had convened a group of senior officials to brainstorm additional ways to punish Harvard, even after Judge Burroughs issued an order on May 23 banning the Department of Homeland Security’s initial plan.

Meantime, Mr. Rubio, in a cable dated May 30, announced a “pilot program” to conduct enhanced vetting of visa applicants’ social media and chose Harvard as the sole school for the experiment, the complaint said.

Harvard’s filing argued that the president’s actions were not aimed at protecting the “interests of the United States,” but instead at pursing a government vendetta against Harvard.

The government’s efforts to bar international students at Harvard “fundamentally alter the education that Harvard endeavors to provide to all its students — including domestic students — as it prepares them to contribute to and lead in our global society,” the university’s complaint said.

Michael C. Bender contributed reporting.