Harvard v. DHS

FIRE filed an amicus curiae brief in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts in support of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) motion for a preliminary injunction against Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) enforcement of a policy that threatened to force hundreds of thousands of international students to return to their home countries. If carried out, ICE’s policy would jeopardize students’ and faculties’ freedom of expression in the classroom. Many international students would return to countries governed by regimes with restrictive internet laws and digital censorship of speech critical of the government. Faced with this dangerous prospect, freedom of expression would be seriously hampered and classrooms would fall subject to foreign state censorship and speech chilling.  FIRE urged the court to enjoin ICE so that vital First Amendment freedoms can be safeguarded from foreign interference.