Johns Hopkins University sues Trump admin to block rule on foreign students

Washington: Johns Hopkins University has joined a growing list of prestigious higher education institutions in the US suing the Trump administration over its "cruel" decision not to allow foreign students to take online-only courses this fall semester.

On Monday, the Trump administration announced new rules for international students for the upcoming fall semester (September to December) that requires them to take an in-person class to remain in the country. Many American universities have scaled back or eliminated in-person classes due to the raging COVID-19 pandemic.

Johns Hopkins University filed a lawsuit in federal court on Friday, pushing back against the the Trump administration order that would abruptly rescind accommodations for online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic for the nearly 5,000 international students at the university and thousands more across the country.

Johns Hopkins said the policy change sending international students back to their home countries if they don't enroll in in-person classes, suddenly and unexpectedly" plunged Johns Hopkins, and virtually all of higher education in the United States, into chaos.

Hundreds of thousands of Indian students in the US will be affected by the decision of the Trump administration.

According to a recent report of the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, there were over 1,94,000 Indian students enrolled in various academic institutions of the US in January this year.

The JHU's complaint, filed in US District Court in Washington, D.C., seeks a temporary restraining order against the proposal by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, stating that it is "arbitrary and capricious," unlawful, and a reversal of earlier guidance upon which months of careful planning is based.

The Baltimore-based private institution joins other well-known schools such as Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California system in filing litigation to stop the US government from enforcing the new rule.