A federal judge in Massachusetts has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to impose a four-year limit on student visas, granting a preliminary injunction one day before the new rules were set to start.
Judge Dennis Saylor, who was appointed by George W. Bush, called the Department of Homeland Security’s rationale for the new rule “exceptionally weak” in a Monday ruling.
“The government’s contention that the rule is necessary to safeguard national security
borders on the absurd,” he wrote. “It is based almost entirely on a small handful of anecdotes, each of which involved incidents that the new rule would do nothing to prevent or even mitigate.”
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The new federal rule by DHS aims to place a strict four-year limit on standard student visas. Immigration officials were set to begin enforcing the new guidelines on Tuesday.
In July, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the policy change would stop foreign students from abusing a “loophole” in the immigration system of “perpetually enrolling in courses to avoid having to leave the U.S.”
A coalition of universities, educators and labor organizations sued DHS in August to stop the rule from taking effect.
Since 1978, Saylor wrote, the United States has issued student visas to foreign students as long as they followed routine immigration rules and made normal progress toward their education goals.
“That system — which has been in place for nearly half a century — has permitted tens of millions of foreign students and researchers to come to the United States. It has also resulted in groundbreaking research in science, medicine, and technology, substantial economic growth, and a host of other benefits, often on a vast scale,” Saylor wrote.
A DHS spokesperson in a statement to The Washington Sun on Monday night called Saylor’s opinion “performative outrage,” adding that the media should be thanking Trump for “cracking down on the rampant fraud” in the student visa system.
James Percival, general counsel for the department, questioned the ruling in post on X.
“Come on a student visa, take one class per semester, and stay here for decades. According to Judge Dennis Saylor, ICE must permit this rampant abuse of our immigration system,” Percival wrote.
This story has been updated with a statement from DHS.
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