Durham joins Boston, L.A. in standing up for international students
DURHAM — The town has signed on to an amicus brief in support of Harvard’s and Massachusetts Institute of Technology's challenge to the Department of Homeland Security's recent changes to the visa rules for foreign students, according to Town Administrator Todd Selig.
The changes mean international students with visas who are taking classes at schools operating entirely online would not be allowed to remain in the United States. Hundreds of universities across the country are also filing in support of Harvard and MIT’s lawsuit against the Trump administration.
Municipalities, including Durham, where the University of New Hampshire’s flagship campus is located, are fighting against this action via an amicus brief, which is a legal document filed in court cases by non-litigants with a strong interest in the subject matter, according to the Public Health Law Center.
“The town of Durham and the other communities joining onto the amicus brief care deeply about their immigrant populations (some of the largest in the country), and have a strong interest in protecting the rights and well-being of all students and their families as they seek to complete their higher education in the United States,” Selig said Monday.
Selig received an email from the Los Angeles City Attorney on Saturday asking if Durham wanted to “join the brief,” according to a copy of the email.
The cities of Los Angeles and Boston are drafting the brief “in support of Harvard and MIT's challenge to the Department of Homeland Security's recent changes to the F-1 and M-1 visa rules for foreign students,” Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Dundas said in the email to Selig.
“Specifically, the brief would be in support of the Plaintiffs' pending motion for a TRO (temporary restraining order),” he added in the email.
Durham joined a total of 26 communities who signed onto the brief, including Boston, Los Angeles, Austin, Texas, Berkeley, California, and Cambridge.
The brief was filed this morning in U.S. District Court in Boston.
The ICE policy change concerning visas for foreign students will have a “direct and deep impact” on college communities, according to the amicus brief.
Selig said Durham is a “welcoming community as evidenced by the message on all of our entrance signs coming into the municipality.”
International students living in college and university towns “make significant economic contributions” to their communities, according to the brief.
Selig described ICE’s new policy concerning international students as a “rash decision” that is “likely to complicate and harm public health efforts in … communities such as Durham.”
UNH intends to bring students back to campus in the fall, but many colleges across the country are not and virtually all schools nationally acknowledge the coronavirus could force them to change plans at any point.
The communities signing onto the brief maintain that the new ICE policy “is likely to send students threatened with removal into the shadows, where public health efforts will not reach them in the midst of a pandemic.
“It also threatens to force colleges and universities to choose between rushing to open their campuses to protect their international students from deportation and respecting the orders and guidance of … public health and state officers,” communities said in the amicus brief.
They concluded by contending that “the stated rationale for ICE’s July 9, 2020 directive is to get colleges and universities ‘to reopen’ in the midst of spiking COVID-19 cases across the country.”
“But DHS (Department of Homeland Security) and ICE have failed to provide any discussion, consideration, or explanation about the harms that will flow from this directive,” communities said in the amicus brief.
Harvard University and MIT sued the Trump administration following ICE’s announcement last week that it will not allow foreign students to remain in the U.S. to take online-only classes in the fall if their institute of higher education makes that shift due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Students from 70 different countries attend University of New Hampshire campuses.
The motion filed by attorneys for Harvard and MIT last week noted that in March Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”), a division of the Department of Homeland Security, issued an exemption to a preexisting rule “that students in the country on certain non-immigrant student visas (“F-1” visas) must attend most classes in person.”
“Recognizing the depth of the emergency and the needs of both students and educational institutions, ICE provided that students holding those non-immigrant visas could attend remote classes while retaining their visa status,” the attorneys said in their TRO request. “The government made clear that this arrangement was ’in effect for the duration of the emergency.’”
In the meantime, many universities have already announced they will offer either remote-learning only or a hybrid of in-person and remote learning, according to the motion.
“Immediately after the Fourth of July weekend, ICE threw Harvard and MIT — indeed, virtually all of higher education in the United States — into chaos. On July 6, 2020, ICE announced that it was rescinding its COVID-19 exemption for international students, requiring all students on F-1 visas whose university curricula are entirely online to depart the country, and barring any such students currently outside the United States from entering or reentering the United States,” according to the motion filed by attorneys for Harvard and MIT last week.
ICE also announced it would require schools “whose classes would be entirely online to submit an operational change plan’ no later than Wednesday, July 15, 2020 — nine days after the change was announced,” the attorney said.
They also contended in the TRO motion that ICE “proceeded without any indication of having considered the health of students, faculty, university staff, or communities.”
“ICE’s action leaves hundreds of thousands of international students with no educational options within the United States. Just weeks from the start of the fall semester, these students are largely unable to transfer to universities providing on-campus instruction, notwithstanding ICE’s suggestion that they might do so to avoid removal from the country,” the attorneys said.
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