Trump Administration Orders International Students To Leave The Country Or Attend Class In Person During Pandemic, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Foreign Nationals Were Pursuing Degrees And Avoiding Infection Simultaneously

The Filing

WASHINGTON. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Monday that international students whose universities moved their fall coursework fully online would be required to leave the United States or transfer to an institution still holding in-person classes, resolving a long-standing concern that foreign nationals had found a way to remain both enrolled and uninfected.

The directive, issued by ICE's Student and Exchange Visitor Program, arrived at a moment when hundreds of American universities were shifting instruction online for the express purpose of not gathering thousands of young people indoors during a pandemic that had killed more than 130,000 Americans. Under the new rule, a student in that situation faced a straightforward set of options: physically attend a lecture hall, find a different school willing to seat students in a lecture hall, or depart the country entirely.

"These individuals came to the United States for an American education, and an American education means showing up," said a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the policy was expected to last roughly a week. "If a university has decided it would rather not assemble its student body in a room, that is its choice. But the visa was issued on the understanding that the room would be used." The directive also gave administrative force to a position the President had stated personally that same morning, in a Twitter message reading, in full, "SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!"

The announcement landed on the roughly one million international students then enrolled in the United States, a population that contributes close to 40 billion dollars to the national economy each year and that administration officials described as having grown overly comfortable. Within 48 hours, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had filed suit in federal court, eventually joined by more than 200 universities and 17 states, all of them objecting to a federal policy instructing schools to choose between their students and a respiratory virus.

On July 14, at the very start of the court hearing, the administration agreed to rescind the policy in full and revert to its earlier guidance, which had quietly permitted online study since March. The rule had survived eight days, a duration officials characterized as sufficient to make its point, though they declined to specify the point.

At press time, ICE had circulated a follow-up bulletin reminding international students that the eight days the policy remained in effect could be considered a valuable, hands-on lesson in the American legal system.

Who Benefits

§President Trump, who added a fresh immigration crackdown to his reelection messaging and gained leverage in his separate, ongoing campaign to pressure every American school into reopening for in-person instruction.
§Stephen Miller, the senior adviser whose multi-year project of shrinking legal immigration through administrative rulemaking advanced by one more increment before the courts intervened.
§U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which secured eight days of expanded federal authority over the enrollment and instruction decisions of private universities.
§Universities in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, which grew measurably more appealing to a million international students newly uncertain whether the United States wanted them to stay.
§Immigration-restriction advocacy groups, which received a prominent federal demonstration of the principle that a student visa can be revoked faster than a syllabus can be printed.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment