More Colleges, States Back Legal Action over Foreign Student Rule

More colleges and state officials are taking legal action against the Trump administration's new restrictions on international students. They say the new policy harms students' safety and forces schools to reconsider their plans for the fall.

Sixteen states and Washington, D.C. joined Massachusetts in a legal action brought last week in federal court in Boston against the rule.

Lawsuits were also brought by Johns Hopkins University and the state of California. The University of California system has said it also plans to take legal action.

The efforts support Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the legal case against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). More than 200 universities have signed legal briefs supporting the case against ICE.

Under the new ICE rule, international students must take at least some of their college classes in person, transfer to U.S-based schools with in-person classes or leave the country. They will have to leave the U.S. even if a health emergency forces their classes online later in the school year. And the government will reject visa requests from international students at colleges or universities that only offer classes online.

A judge is set to begin hearing arguments in the case Tuesday. If the judge does not suspend the rule, colleges across the U.S. will have until Wednesday to notify ICE if they plan to be fully online this fall.

新闻来源：AP