US judge halts Trump visa rule for students, journalists nationwide

Washington,UPDATED: Sep 15, 2026 10:30 IST

A federal judge in the US has temporarily blocked a Trump administration rule that sought to cap how long foreign students, journalists and exchange visitors could stay in the country, a day before it was due to take effect. A Massachusetts district judge said on Monday that the policy would probably cause “catastrophic” damage to the US economy and higher education system, while rejecting the government’s claim that it was needed to protect the country.

The preliminary injunction stops the rule from being implemented while the case is heard in court. Judge F Dennis Saylor IV also rejected the government’s argument that the relief should apply only to the plaintiffs and not across the country.

The rule, finalised in July and due to come into force on Tuesday, set a four-year limit on student and exchange visitor visas and a 240-day limit on journalists’ visas, excluding China. Under the now-postponed rule, mediapersons from China were to get visas with a 90-day limit. Students and journalists could apply for extensions, but approval would have been left to the discretion of Department of Homeland Security officials, with no provision to appeal a denial.

Several organisations, mainly from the higher education sector and labour unions, had approached the court seeking to strike down the rule. The plaintiffs represent nearly 600 public and private institutions, but the judge noted that there are more than 5,000 higher education institutions in the United States. He ruled that limiting relief to only the represented parties would require parallel regulatory systems and repeated, possibly inconsistent decisions on whether a student or institution was covered by the order.

Harvard President Alan M Garber had called the rule “odd” in July, pointing to the mismatch between the four-year cap and the usual duration of a PhD. “A typical PhD program usually takes at least six years, so four years is a bit odd as the cutoff for the visa,” Garber said.

The DHS had argued that the limits would help curb fraud and make it easier to stop people from overstaying their visas. But the judge also noted the possibility of misuse under the rule. He wrote about “the obvious likelihood that the visas of foreign journalists who are critical of the government -- more particularly, DHS officials -- will not be renewed”. In his order granting the preliminary injunction, he said: “The weakness of the connection between the rule and its purported rationales raises legitimate questions as to whether its real purpose is not to safeguard national security and protect our borders, but to achieve other, undisclosed, goals – such as, for example, asserting greater government control over academic institutions and the press.”

For now, the court order has put the visa limits on hold nationwide, keeping the existing system in place while the challenge to the rule continues.

With PTI Inputs

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