Johns Hopkins University has filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s new guidelines barring foreign students to remain in the country if their classes go completely online.

“John has filed a suit in the US District Court in Washington, DC, to challenge this guidance. As we stated unequivocally earlier this week, this guidance puts our students and our institution in an impossible position and upends months of deliberate and thoughtful planning guided by the world’s leading experts in public health in the midst of the growing Covid-19 pandemic,” the university said.

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last week had issued fresh guidelines for international students with F-1 and M-1 visas barring foreign students from entering or remaining in the country if their classes go entirely online.

“Non-immigrant F-1 and M-1 students attending schools operating entirely online may not take a full online course load and remain in the United States. The US Department of State will not issue visas to students enrolled in schools and/or programmes that are fully online for the fall semester, nor will the US,” read the guidelines.

“Active students currently in the US enrolled in such programmes must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status. If not, they may face immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal proceedings,” it said.

These guidelines were challenged in court by other prestigious institutions such as Harvard and MIT last week. The lawsuit sought a temporary restraining order and preliminary and permanent injunctive relief preventing the enforcement of these guidelines by Homeland Security and ICE.

“As you have likely seen, our peers, including MIT and Harvard, have filed similar suits, and we anticipate that others will follow from various state attorneys general as well as other institutions of higher education,” read the official release from John Hopkins University.

“Our case presents issues not addressed in the other litigation and could help increase the likelihood of a national ban on enforcing this new rule. We expect these cases to move very quickly, and we anticipate arguments on the requests for a preliminary injunction as soon as next week,” it said.

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