July 15, 2020 09:37 AM UTC

Trump Rescinds Gratuitous Persecution of Immigrant Students

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• by: Colorado Pols

AP via the Denver Post reporting on a quiet end to an ugly standoff that developed for the sole reason that President Donald Trump and his chief anti-immigrant henchman Stephen Miller wanted to complicate the lives of thousands of students legally in the country:

Facing eight federal lawsuits and opposition from hundreds of universities, the Trump administration on Tuesday rescinded a rule that would have required international students to transfer or leave the country if their schools held classes entirely online because of the pandemic.

The decision was announced at the start of a hearing in a federal lawsuit in Boston brought by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs said federal immigration authorities agreed to pull the July 6 directive and “return to the status quo.”

…The announcement brings relief to thousands of foreign students who had been at risk of being deported from the country, along with hundreds of universities that were scrambling to reassess their plans for the fall in light of the policy.

Michael Karlik of the Colorado Springs Gazette has the relieved response from the University of Colorado and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser:

“All of CU’s campuses fully support our international students, and we are joining our colleagues across the state and across the nation to advocate for their ability to continue their studies,” said Philip DiStefano, chancellor of the University of Colorado-Boulder. “We thank our international students for their patience as we coordinated our efforts both across our campuses and with other stakeholders across Colorado.”

“[W]e prevailed in standing up for Colorado universities to welcome international students in a responsible and humane fashion,” wrote Attorney General Phil Weiser on Twitter. Earlier in the week, Weiser joined 17 other attorneys general in filing suit against ICE, alleging that the directive affected their states’ universities and economies.

Although the administration claims that the now-rescinded rule was meant to “encourage” schools to reopen campuses to all students, not just international students, the severe consequences of this action that would only affect non-citizens means these thousands of people legally in the country were simply being used as humanitarian leverage to obtain a politically desired outcome. It’s troubling to think that because the people who would have suffered most were not American citizens, the Trump administration thought they could take this action without, or at least without as much pushback. But that is without a reasonable doubt exactly what they believed.

Backing down is a relief, but the thinking that brought us here still holds sway at the White House.