Trump, Project 2025 and Immigration

In arguing for “a creative and aggressive approach” to border patrol, Project 2025 suggested the possible “use of active-duty military personnel and National Guardsmen to assist in arrest operations along the border—something that has not yet been done.”

The Trump administration has done just that, designating strips of land along the border as extensions of military bases, among other actions.

On his first day in office, Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border and issued an executive order “clarifying” the use of the military to protect the “territorial integrity” of the U.S., giving him broad powers to unilaterally direct more federal funding and resources to border security. 

A day after the national emergency was declared, Acting Secretary of Defense Robert Salesses met with top military officials to develop plans to implement Trump’s directive, which included sending 1,500 active-duty service members to San Diego and El Paso, Texas. (At the time, there were about 2,500 U.S. National Guard members and Reserves at the border, but there were no active-duty members.) 

“This is just the beginning,” Salesses said in a Jan. 22 statement. “In short order, the Department will develop and execute additional missions in cooperation with DHS, federal agencies, and state partners to address the full range of threats outlined by the President at our nation’s borders.”

A day later, Gen. Steven Nordhaus, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said that the guard “is increasing its support and closely coordinating emergent requirements with USNORTHCOM and U.S. Transportation Command for additional personnel, military airlift, barrier construction and other capabilities to meet Presidential and Secretary of Defense directives.”

Since then, the Trump administration has significantly escalated military use to help crackdown on illegal immigration at the border and in the interior of the U.S., and drug smuggling via boats.

In March, the Defense Department activated a Joint Task Force-Southern Border to help ICE with transportation maintenance and operations, including air support, and detection and monitoring of “suspicious activity,” among other things. 

The Joint Task Force-Southern Border established four National Defense Areas in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas “to protect the U.S. southern border from unlawful entry,” according to the U.S. Northern Command. The four zones span approximately 515 miles along the southern border, a spokesperson for the Northern Command told us in an email.

“[T]he National Defense Areas are slim, noncontiguous extensions of existing military bases,” a task force spokesperson said in an email. “In the case of the New Mexico National Defense Area, the land width ranges from 60 feet to a mile across approximately 170 noncontiguous miles.”

After Trump issued a memo in April on guidance to the Defense Department on “sealing” the border and “repelling invasions,” the U.S. Northern Command authorized soldiers in the New Mexico National Defense Area to search and detain trespassers “until an appropriate law enforcement entity can assume custody.”

Mark Nevitt, an associate professor at Emory University School of Law, wrote in April that turning “a strip of federal land along the U.S. southern border into a massive ‘National Defense Area'” effectively bypasses the Posse Comitatus Act, which “prohibits federal military forces from being used in a law enforcement capacity.”

There is an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act known as the “military purpose doctrine,” Elizabeth Goitein and Joseph Nunn at the Brennan Center for Justice wrote in April.

“The doctrine, conceived by the executive branch and endorsed by the courts, holds that an action taken primarily to further a military purpose does not violate the Posse Comitatus Act even if it provides an incidental benefit to civilian law enforcement,” they wrote.

The border task force totals 7,600 active-duty personnel, including 250 who regularly patrol the southwest border, the Defense Department official said.

The Justice Department has filed trespassing charges against hundreds of migrants, but a federal judge in May dismissed cases for about 100 defendants because they did not knowingly enter military property. “[T]he United States provides no facts from which one could reasonably conclude that the Defendant knew he was entering the NMNDA,” the judge wrote.

In July, Trump signed a reconciliation bill that provided “$1 billion to support military activities at the southern border, including the temporary detention of migrants on DoD installations and operating and building infrastructure in ‘national defense areas,’” the Federal News Network wrote.

As for the National Guard, there is a long history of the guard being deployed to the southern border, including under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Trump during his first term. 

But in his second term, Trump expanded his use of the National Guard beyond the border. In May, DHS requested 20,000 National Guard troops to help with the president’s crackdown on illegal immigration in the interior of the country — not at the southern border – to comply with Trump’s “mandate from the American people to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens.”

In response, the Defense Department has asked 20 states – all run by Republican governors – to activate National Guard troops to support ICE operations, according to several news reports.

The governors of Tennessee and Wyoming were among the first to activate National Guard troops to help ICE, while the governor of Vermont declined the Defense Department’s request. 

The guard members were activated under Title 32 status, which means they would “fall under the command and control of their state or territory governor, but their duty is federally funded and regulated,” as explained in a fact sheet on National Guard duty statuses. 

The Christian Science Monitor wrote that experts “aren’t aware of prior use of the National Guard under what’s called Title 32 status to assist ICE in the nation’s interior.” 

Chris Mirasola, an assistant law professor at the University of Houston Law Center, told the Christian Science Monitor that the decision is a “serious escalation” in the use of National Guard troops for immigration enforcement. 

Trump’s crackdown at the southern border appears to have significantly reduced the number of people trying to cross the border illegally. The U.S. Border Patrol, which is responsible for illegal entries between ports of entry, reported 49,620 enforcement encounters at the southwest border from February through August, down 93% from the same seven-month period in 2024. 

The military has also been used to work with the U.S. Coast Guard on drug interdiction missions in the Gulf and carrying out deadly air strikes on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean that the administration said were transporting drugs.

(Style note: On Sept. 5, Trump issued an executive order to rebrand the Defense Department as the “Department of War.” A formal name change would require an act of Congress, so the president’s order directed federal agencies to use the “secondary Department of War designation” when referring to the Department of Defense.)

Under the Biden administration, immigration agents were generally prevented from conducting enforcement actions in or near “protected areas,” such as shelters, churches and courthouses.  

“This principle is fundamental,” then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wrote in an Oct. 27, 2021, memo to top ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials. “We can accomplish our enforcement mission without denying or limiting individuals’ access to needed medical care, children access to their schools, the displaced access to food and shelter, people of faith access to their places of worship, and more.”

Project 2025 called for rescinding “[a]ll ICE memoranda identifying ‘sensitive zones’ where ICE personnel are prohibited from operating.” Instead, the document said, ICE should [r]ely on the good judgment of officers in the field to avoid inappropriate situations.”

On the day Trump took office, DHS rescinded Biden-era guidelines for immigration enforcement in or near protected areas – echoing Project 2025’s language about trusting ICE agents. 

“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” DHS said in a press release. “The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.”

As a result, there have been incidents of migrants being arrested at or near courthouses, churches, shelters and schools. 

On July 16, immigration advocates filed a class action lawsuit to stop the administration from arresting and deporting those who showed up at courthouses for scheduled immigration hearings. The suit, which is still pending, claims that the migrants are being denied due process.  

Julia Gelatt, associate director of the immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute, told us in a phone interview that the Trump administration is “trying to send the message that people in the country without authorization aren’t safe to be here” and “should consider leaving” the U.S.

In October 2021, Mayorkas, the DHS secretary, issued a memo directing top immigration officials to “cease mass worksite operations” that sometimes result “in the simultaneous arrest of hundreds of workers.” Instead, they should focus enforcement efforts “on unscrupulous employers who exploit the vulnerability of undocumented workers,” the memo said.

Project 2025 called for a different approach – which the Trump administration has embraced. The document urged ICE to use “civil search warrants” at worksites to arrest “illegal aliens.”

“The use of Blackies Warrants should be operationalized within ICE. These civil search warrants are commonly used for worksite enforcement when agents have probable cause that illegal aliens are employed at a business,” Project 2025 said.

Search warrants are generally sealed, so we don’t know how many times ICE has executed Blackie’s warrants at worksites. But we know that it has, because a federal magistrate in Texas rejected the government’s application for a Blackie’s warrant because, he said, it violated the U.S. Constitution. 

A Blackie’s warrant – named after the 1981 ruling Blackie’s House of Beef Inc. v. Castillo – is a controversial law enforcement tool because it allows ICE agents to obtain a search warrant with only providing “the places to be searched and time and scope of the search,” according to ICE’s Search and Seizure Handbook, which describes a Blackie’s warrant as a “civil/administrative warrant.”  

“The major advantage of the Blackie’s warrant is that there is no need to specifically name the aliens being sought,” the handbook said. “Rather, the Blackie’s warrant and accompanying affidavit need only set forth a plausible basis for believing that there are unnamed illegal aliens present at the location to be searched.”

Gelatt, at the Migration Policy Institute, told us that once ICE enters a place of employment “they can question everybody about their immigration status. And if someone tries to leave the worksite, that would give a probable cause to interview them … or to arrest them, potentially.”

But civil rights advocates say Blackie’s warrants violate the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects individuals from “unreasonable searches and seizures” and bars the execution of a warrant unless it names “the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Jessica Hahn, a senior attorney for the National Immigration Law Center, told the Washington Post that ICE is using Blackie’s warrants “to make an end run around the legal requirements that bind law enforcement.” In an email, Hahn told us that she could only confirm the application for a Blackie’s warrant in Texas, “because the government files these requests under seal.”

In Texas, U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew M. Edison rejected the government’s application for a civil/administrative search warrant, in part, because such a search would be “inherently criminal.”’

In his order, Edison cited a 1986 law that made it a criminal offense to knowingly hire workers living in the U.S. illegally, and federal rule that “requires ‘probable cause to search for and seize a person.’”

“Although the Government bills this search as civil, it is inherently criminal because the owner(s) of the target business face criminal penalties for employing aliens without work authorization,” he wrote. “Moreover, the vehicle for obtaining a warrant to search for a person—an alien is a person—is Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(d)(1), not an administrative warrant.”

Edison issued his opinion on May 27. Even after that ruling, ICE continued its mass worksite enforcement efforts, as it seeks to meet Trump’s promise of “mass deportation.” 

In one week in June, ICE announced the arrest of more than 70 workers at a meatpacking plant in Nebraska and more than 80 workers at a racetrack in Louisiana. 

In September, ICE and other law enforcement agencies detained 475 workers at a Hyundai battery plant in Georgia. According to CNN, the search warrant executed in Georgia identified “four people specifically to be searched, but authorities arrived with substantial personnel and equipment, suggesting an intention to conduct a broader sweep.” The raid resulted in the detention of 317 South Koreans, although that country’s government said the workers were in the U.S. to train Americans to work at the plant. Trump later offered to allow them to remain in the U.S. to complete the training, but only one stayed, according to Reuters.  

ICE said it has carried out dozens of “worksite enforcement operations” that have resulted in the arrests of more than 1,000 workers, as of April. (ICE has not responded to our request for updated arrest numbers.)

The overall number of ICE arrests under Trump is up significantly. In Trump’s first full seven months, from February through August, ICE has made 158,766 arrests — up from 55,383 arrests during that same seven-month period last year under Biden, according to ICE detention statistics for “initial book-ins by arresting agency” in fiscal years 2025 and 2024. However, U.S. Customs and Border Protection arrests are significantly down, so total arrests by both agencies are up only 9.3%.

As for deportations, at least 180,000 people have been deported by ICE under Trump, the New York Times reported, citing data through July 29 from the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley. The article noted that ICE “is on track to deport more than 400,000 people” in Trump’s first year – which would be short of Trump’s goal of 1 million a year.

Project 2025 called for a “significant increase” in beds at immigration detention facilities, “raising the daily available number of beds to 100,000.”

Under Trump, ICE has added “approximately 18,000 beds” in less than seven months, bringing the agency’s detention capacity to roughly 62,000, an ICE spokesperson told us in a statement.

“ICE has worked with private detention operators, local governments, and other federal partners to identify and bring online over 60 new detention facilities and added permanent and temporary capacity to its existing facilities for a total of approximately 18,000 additional beds active or pending activation,” the statement said.

And, under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, more money will now be available to significantly increase bed space. The new law provides ICE with $45 billion through fiscal year 2029 to increase capacity at adult detention facilities and family residential centers.

The American Immigration Council, which advocates “a fair process for immigrants,” said that the $45 billion “could result in daily detention of at least 116,000 non-citizens.”

As of Sept. 9, ICE had 58,766 people in its detention centers – up about 57% from the 37,395 detainees a year ago on Sept. 8, 2024, according to the Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, which has been collecting and distributing immigration data since 1989.

Project 2025 called for the elimination of two immigration watchdog offices: the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman and the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman. It also called on DHS to close its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, but keep one person as a Civil Rights and Civil Liberties officer. 

In justifying its recommendations, Project 2025 said: 

• The immigration detention ombudsman “was designed to create another impediment to detention through an additional layer of so-called oversight.”

• The immigration services ombudsman’s duties “can be performed (and sometimes already are)” by the DHS inspector general and Government Accountability Office.

• Federal law established only an officer of civil rights and civil liberties, “not an office.”

The New York Times in March reported that DHS “shut down” all three offices. The New York Times quoted Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokeswoman, as saying the decision was needed to “streamline oversight to remove roadblocks to enforcement.”

“These offices have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining D.H.S.’s mission,” McLaughlin told the Times. “Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations.” 

However, all three offices say on their websites that they remain open “and will perform its statutorily required functions.” 

In March, immigrant and good government advocates expressed concern and called on DHS to reverse its decision. One such advocate, who asked not to be identified, told us that the DHS offices were “effectively closed,” because of the staffing cuts. “Currently, we’ve been told that the offices are re-opened, but we have not received any reliable information about whether they have sufficient personnel to carry out their functions,” the advocate said. 

We asked DHS about the status of each office, including the number of employees, as well as the number of complaints that they have handled, inspections they have made and reports they have issued. A senior DHS official told us the offices remain open, but did not answer our specific questions. 

“All legally required functions continue to be performed, but in an efficient and cost-effective manner and without hindering the Department’s mission of securing the homeland,” the DHS official told us. “The oversight offices continue to receive and open new complaints and investigations.”

Temporary Protected Status, which was created by the Immigration Act of 1990, extends work authorization and deportation protection to nationals from countries suffering from armed conflicts, natural disasters, or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions,” as DHS explains.

As of March 31, there were approximately 1.3 million foreign nationals living in the U.S. from 17 countries designated for TPS by the DHS secretary, according to an Aug. 28 Congressional Research Service report. Close to half of them – 605,015 – were from Venezuela under two separate TPS designations, the CRS report said.

Without elaborating, Project 2025 called on Congress to “repeal” TPS designations. Only Congress can “repeal” an immigration program created by statute. But the Trump administration has been trying for months to terminate protected status for hundreds of thousands of migrants from several countries.

The Department of Homeland Security terminated TPS designations for citizens of Venezuela on Feb. 5, Afghanistan on May 13, Cameroon on June 4, Nepal on June 6 and Haiti on July 1, as well as Nicaragua and Honduras on July 8. In Venezuela’s case, DHS said it was seeking to terminate the designation made in October 2023, which isn’t set to expire until October 2026, but not the 2021 designation of Venezuela, which expired Sept. 10.

There have been court challenges to every termination notice, with mixed results.

On July 1, U.S. District Judge Brian M. Cogan temporarily blocked the Trump administration from terminating TPS status for Haitians.

On July 31, U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson halted the TPS termination from taking effect for Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal. “In totality, Plaintiffs have produced sufficient evidence demonstrating racial and discriminatory animus in support of their Fifth Amendment claim,” Thompson wrote in her July 31 ruling. “Color is neither a poison nor a crime.”

But an appeals court on Aug. 20 stayed Thompson’s order, allowing Homeland Security to terminate TPS for all three countries while the litigation process continued. The protections ended for people from Nepal on Aug. 20, when the court order was issued, and Sept. 8, as originally scheduled, for Hondurans. 

In the cases of Cameroon and Afghanistan, a federal appeals court allowed the legal challenges to move forward but gave only Afghans a brief reprieve from the termination dates set by DHS. In compliance with the court ruling, DHS ended the temporary protections for Afghans on July 21, rather than July 14. The designation ended for Cameroonians on Aug. 4, as scheduled.  

All the rulings came after the Trump administration won a key Supreme Court victory in May. In an unsigned order, the justices allowed the Trump administration to end the program for Venezuelans, while the lower court rules on the merits of the case. But after considering the merits of the administration’s case, U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen on Sept. 5 granted the plaintiffs request for summary judgment, meaning the protections for Haitians and Venezuelans will remain in place.

In his Sept. 5 ruling, Chen wrote that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s “actions in vacating the orders of the prior administration and terminating TPS exceeded the Secretary’s statutory authority and were arbitrary and capricious, and thus must be set aside under the Administrative Procedure Act,” which oversees the process for developing and issuing regulations.

DHS has taken no steps to terminate TPS designations – which can range from six to 18 months — for 10 other countries. Here is a list of those countries and the expiration dates for each: Ukraine and Sudan (Oct. 19, 2026), El Salvador (Sept. 9, 2026), Lebanon (May 27, 2026), Somalia (March 17, 2026), Yemen (March 3, 2026), Ethiopia (Dec. 12), South Sudan (Nov. 3), Myanmar (Nov. 25) and Syria (Sept. 30).

Project 2025 called for “an indefinite curtailment of the number of USRAP refugee admissions,” referring to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. The document blamed the need for a “curtailment” on the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border. 

“The State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, which administers USRAP, must shift its resources to challenges stemming from the current immigration situation until the crisis can be contained and refugee-focused screening and vetting capacity can reasonably be restored,” the document said.

Trump, who sharply reduced refugee admissions during his first term, went further than just curtailing the program. 

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order calling for a “realignment” of the refugee program, including an indefinite suspension of refugee admissions until the program “aligns with the interests of the United States.” The program has yet to resume, although Trump made an exception for refugees from South Africa’s white minority Afrikaner ethnic group.

Three nonprofit organizations involved in U.S. refugee admissions — the International Refugee Assistance Project (on behalf of Church World Service), HIAS and Lutheran Community Services Northwest — filed for a preliminary injunction on Feb. 10 to prevent the ban from taking effect while the case moves forward. 

The court filing said the impact of the ban was “immediate and severe.” On its website, the Church World Service said that more than 12,000 refugees “completed security screenings” and had their flights to the U.S. cancelled because of the refugee ban. For example, “Pacito,” the lead plaintiff, “was scheduled to travel on January 22 with his wife and baby and had sold all of the family’s possessions and given up their rental house in preparation; he then learned that their travel was canceled,” according to the lawsuit, which uses pseudonyms to protect the identity of all the named plaintiffs. 

After months of judicial rulings and appeals, an appeals court ruled (in a clarifying opinion issued April 21) that refugees who had an “approved refugee application” and “had arranged and confirmable travel plans” on or before Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order can enter the country. 

About 70 of the 160 refugees affected by the ruling have been resettled in the U.S., IRAP spokesman Spencer Tilger told us in an Aug. 8 email. That includes “Pacito,” the lead plaintiff, who arrived in July. Asked if any of the other 110 refugees have been resettled, Tilger told us in a Sept. 18 email that “unfortunately there haven’t been any changes in the numbers since we last spoke.”

As we wrote during the election, Project 2025 recommended “the overturning of the Flores Settlement Agreement.” The 1997 court-approved agreement serves as “nationwide policy for the detention, release, and treatment of minors” in immigration custody, as explained last year in a CRS report. 

“Detained minors are to be held in ‘safe and sanitary’ facilities and cannot be housed with unrelated adults for more than 24 hours,” the CRS report said. “Under the FSA, within three to five days of a minor’s apprehension and detention, the government must generally either (1) release the minor to a parent, legal guardian, adult relative, or other ‘capable and willing’ designated adult or entity or (2) place the minor in a nonsecure facility ‘licensed by an appropriate State agency to provide residential, group, or foster care services for dependent children.’”

In May, the Department of Justice filed a motion with U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee to terminate the Flores agreement, arguing that “ongoing judicial management” interferes with the Trump administration’s ability to carry out its duties. In August, Gee held a hearing on the DOJ’s motion, and a week later ruled that the settlement should remain in place.

“There is nothing new under the sun regarding the facts or the law,” Gee wrote. “The Court therefore could deny Defendants’ motion on that basis alone.”

In his first term, Trump tried unsuccessfully to change the agreement, finalizing a rule in 2019 that immigration advocates, such as the American Immigration Council, said “would have allowed the administration to hold immigrant children and their parents indefinitely in jail-like settings.” But Gee, who oversees the Flores agreement, blocked the rule from taking effect, calling the Flores agreement a “binding contract and a consent decree” that federal officials cannot unilaterally change “merely because they no longer agree with its approach as a matter of policy.”

Project 2025 recommended that ICE, working with the State Department, “eliminate or significantly reduce the number of visas issued to foreign students from enemy nations.”

The Trump administration seems to have accomplished that – and not always for just students from “enemy nations.”

Although the administration’s actions directed at foreign students have sometimes been rejected by the courts or rescinded or modified by the administration itself, delays and uncertainties caused by the administration could mean a 30% to 40% decline in foreign student enrollment nationwide this fall, according to modeling by NAFSA: Association of International Educators.

In a July 29 report, the NAFSA attributed the projected decline in the issuance of new visas to four things, including a delay in student visa interviews and a full or partial ban on the issuance of visas for students from 19 countries. 

The pause in student visa interviews lasted from May 27 to June 18, which NAFSA called “the peak issuance season for students seeking to enroll in a U.S. institution this fall.” The pause was lifted on June 18, but only after the State Department issued a new policy that “directed U.S. consulates [to] implement new social media vetting protocols.”

The visa ban, which Trump issued June 4, covers students in all 19 countries – the 12 countries that are covered by the full ban (Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen) and seven that are covered by the partial ban (Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.)

NAFSA said F-1 visas, which are for academic students, were down 12% from January to April and declined 22% in May 2025 compared with May 2024, citing State Department data. The State Department hasn’t released monthly data for June, July or August.

But noncitizens must fill out an I-94 form to enter the U.S., and the U.S. International Trade Administration’s monthly data show that the arrival of F and M visa holders (for academic and vocational students and their dependents) declined 25.7% in June, 28.3% in July, and 19.1% in August from last year.

Although Project 2025 refers to China as a “malign influence,” a “geopolitical threat” and an adversary, Chinese students – for now – seem welcome in the U.S. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a statement May 28 saying, “Under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.” But two weeks later, Trump reversed course. 

In a June 11 social media post announcing a tentative trade deal with China, Trump said: “WE WILL PROVIDE TO CHINA WHAT WAS AGREED TO, INCLUDING CHINESE STUDENTS USING OUR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES (WHICH HAS ALWAYS BEEN GOOD WITH ME!).”

But, under the Trump administration, no foreign students are welcome at Harvard University.

Harvard had its Student and Exchange Visitor Program Certification revoked by the Department of Homeland Security on May 22. Court rulings temporarily (May 23) and then indefinitely (June 20) blocked the visa revocation order from taking effect. 

In between those rulings, Trump issued a proclamation on June 4 that suspended visas for “any new Harvard student as a nonimmigrant under F, M, or J visas” and directed Rubio “to consider revoking existing F, M, or J visas for current Harvard students.” Trump’s proclamation was also blocked by the June 20 court order, but the order “does not affect the DHS’s ongoing administrative review of Harvard’s F-1 international student program,” the university said.  

In response to Trump’s proclamation, Rubio announced a new investigation on July 23 “into Harvard University’s continued eligibility as a sponsor for the Exchange Visitor Program,” referring to Harvard’s J-1 international exchange visitor program. “The investigation will ensure that State Department programs do not run contrary to our nation’s interests,” Rubio said. 

For now, Harvard continues to enroll foreign students – although it is unclear what impact the Trump administration’s policies have had on the university’s enrollment for this academic year. The university has not released any enrollment figures, and it did not respond to our request for that data.