Trump Admin Revokes Harvard’s Authorization To Enroll International Students

Updated May 22, 2025, at 3:25 p.m.

The Trump administration revoked Harvard’s ability to enroll international students on Thursday, dramatically escalating the administration’s fight with the University and threatening thousands of current students.

In a letter addressed to Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote that Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification was halted, “effective immediately.”

The revocation would prevent Harvard from enrolling any international students on F- or J- nonimmigrant visas for the 2025-2026 academic year. Harvard currently hosts more than 6,000 international students, many of whom attend on F-1 or J-1 visas.

The announcement comes just one week before thousands of international students at Harvard are set to graduate.

The move is likely to prompt a legal challenge from Harvard, according to a person familiar with the matter. Harvard has not yet filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration.

Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton called the DHS’s move “unlawful” and wrote that Harvard was “fully committed” to maintaining Harvard’s ability to enroll international students.

“This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission,” he wrote in a statement.

In a press release, Noem announced that current international students must “transfer or lose their legal status.”

When a university’s SEVP certification is revoked, currently enrolled international students must choose between transferring to a different institution, changing their immigration status, or leaving the country, according to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement website.

The move comes three weeks after Harvard partially submitted disciplinary records of international students that were requested by the Trump administration in mid-April. Administrators have declined to specify what information was shared with the agency.

The DHS initially sent Harvard an April 16 letter demanding the University provide information on international students’ campus activities, including protest participation. Noem had threatened to revoke Harvard’s SEVP certification if it did not comply.

In the letter to Garber, Noem alleged that the records that Harvard submitted on April 30 were “insufficient” and failed to address “simple reporting requirements.” She also accused Harvard of “perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas sympathies, and employs racist ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, you have lost this privilege.”

A Harvard spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to Noem’s letter to Garber, the DHS reiterated its records request after Harvard’s initial response, offering the University’s Office of General Counsel a second chance to turn over additional documents.

But the DHS alleged that Harvard “ignored” the request for the second set of documents.

Noem gave Harvard 72 hours to turn over a flurry of documents to the DHS to have “the opportunity” to regain its SEVP certification before the upcoming academic year.

Those documents include paper records, audio, and video of protest activity by any international student enrolled at any of Harvard’s schools in the last five years. The DHS also asked for the full slate of disciplinary records of international students at Harvard for the last five years.

It is unclear whether the Trump administration will restore Harvard’s SEVP certification if it submits the requested documents.

Thursday’s letter followed several days of back-and-forth between Harvard and the White House over the legality of the records request, The New York Times reported, citing three unnamed sources.

Leo Gerdén ’25, an international student from Sweden, said the announcement was “devastating” and that Harvard needs to fight the DHS decision “as hard as we possibly can.”

“Every tool available they should use to try and change this. It could be all the legal resources suing the Trump administration, whatever they can use the endowment to, whatever they can use their political network in Congress,” Gerdén said. “This should be, by far, priority number one.”

Karl N. Molden ’27, another international student and organizer of Harvard Students for Freedom with Gerdén, said the federal government’s actions have created widespread panic among students.

“The federal government is asking us to transfer out,” Molden said. “They now have to go through this stressful procedure again, find a university, and transfer their credits, and lose all their friends.”

“It looks like it’s all falling apart,” he added.

Still, Molden said he had faith in Harvard’s ability to push back against the Trump administration’s efforts.

“They’re doing the best that they can to support us,” he said. “But it’s absolutely terrible, and it’s shocking.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.

—Staff writer Grace E. Yoon can be reached at grace.yoon@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @graceunkyoon.

—Staff writer Samuel A. Church can be reached at samuel.church@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @samuelachurch.

—Staff writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at cam.srivastava@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @camsrivastava.