Trump administration blocks Harvard from enrolling foreign students, threatens broader crackdown

US President Donald Trump's administration revoked Harvard University's ability to enroll international students yesterday (22 May), and is forcing current foreign students to transfer to other schools or lose their legal status, while also threatening to expand the crackdown to other colleges.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ordered the department to terminate Harvard University's Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification effective for the 2025-2026 school year, the department said in a statement.

Noem accused the university of "fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party."

Harvard said the move by the Trump administration - which affects thousands of students - was illegal and amounted to retaliation.

The decision marked a significant escalation of the Trump administration's campaign against the elite Ivy League university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which has emerged as one of Trump's most prominent institutional targets. The move came after Harvard refused to provide information that Noem demanded about some foreign student visa holders at Harvard, the department said.

Harvard enrolled nearly 6,800 international students in the 2024-2025 school year, amounting to 27% of its total enrollment, according to university statistics.

In 2022, Chinese nationals were the biggest group of foreign students at 1,016, university figures showed. After that were students from Canada, India, South Korea, Britain, Germany, Australia, Singapore and Japan.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments," Noem said in a statement.

In a letter to the university, Noem gave Harvard "the opportunity" to regain its certification by turning over within 72 hours a raft of records about foreign students, including any video or audio of their protest activity in the past five years.

Harvard called the government's action "unlawful" and said it was "fully committed" to educating foreign students.

"This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard's academic and research mission," the university said in a statement.

Congressional Democrats denounced the revocation, with US Representative Jaime Raskin calling it an "intolerable attack on Harvard's independence and academic freedom" and saying it was government retaliation for Harvard's previous resistance to Trump.

Trump has already frozen some $3 billion in federal grants to Harvard in recent weeks, leading the university to sue to restore the funding.

In a separate lawsuit related to Trump's efforts to terminate the legal status of hundreds of foreign students across the US, a federal judge ruled on Thursday that the administration could not end their status without following proper regulatory procedures. It was not immediately clear how that ruling would affect the action against Harvard.

During an interview with Fox News' "The Story with Martha MacCallum," Noem was asked if she was considering similar moves at other universities, including Columbia University in New York.

"Absolutely, we are," Noem said. "This should be a warning to every other university to get your act together."

Trump Targets Universities

Trump, a Republican, took office in January pledging a wide-ranging immigration crackdown. His administration has tried to revoke student visas and green cards of foreign students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests.

He has undertaken an extraordinary effort to revamp private colleges and schools across the US, claiming they foster anti-American, Marxist and "radical left" ideologies. He has criticised Harvard for hiring prominent Democrats for teaching or leadership positions.

The US Department of Health and Human Services said on Monday that it was terminating a further $60 million in federal grants to Harvard because it failed to address antisemitic harassment and ethnic discrimination.

In a legal complaint filed earlier this month, Harvard said it was committed to combating anti-semitism and had taken steps to ensure its campus is safe and welcoming to Jewish and Israeli students.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration advocacy group, said the action against Harvard's student visa program "needlessly punishes thousands of innocent students."

"None of them have done anything wrong, they're just collateral damage to Trump," he said on the social media site Bluesky.