Harvard University secures court order blocking Trump’s foreign student ban

The United States District Judge Allison Burroughs says she would issue a brief extension of an order temporarily blocking President Donald Trump’s plan to bar foreign nationals from entering the U.S. to study at Harvard University.

Burroughs, at the end of a hearing in Boston in Harvard’s legal challenge to the restrictions, on Monday, June 16, 2025, extended to June 23 a temporary restraining order that had been set to expire on Thursday.

She said she wanted to give herself more time to prepare a ruling.

“We’ll kick out an opinion as soon as we can,” she said.

The judge scheduled the hearing after issuing a temporary restraining order on June 5 preventing the administration from implementing a proclamation that Trump had signed a day earlier.

A preliminary injunction would provide longer-term relief to Harvard while its lawsuits proceeds, Reuters reported.

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About 6,800 international students attended Harvard in its most recent school year, making up about 27% of the student population of the prestigious Cambridge, Massachusetts-based school.

The judge, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, did not indicate how she would ultimately rule.

But she said a U.S. Department of Justice attorney defending Trump’s policy faced an “uphill battle” convincing her that Harvard would not be irreparably harmed if the proclamation was implemented.

The Trump administration has launched a multifront attack on the oldest and wealthiest U.S. university, freezing billions of dollars in grants and other funding and proposing to end its tax-exempt status, prompting a series of legal challenges.

Harvard has filed two separate lawsuits before Burroughs seeking to unfreeze about $2.5 billion in funding and to prevent the administration from blocking the ability of international students to attend the university.

The Star