The filing gave Harvard 30 days to produce evidence showing why it should not be blocked from hosting and enrolling foreign students, who make up 27 per cent of Harvard’s student body.
Burroughs had already temporarily paused the policy, extending that pause Thursday pending the new injunction.
She said she would seek to determine whether the actions of Trump’s officials had “a retaliatory motive”.
A law professor present in the packed court said the Trump administration was prolonging the suffering of students.
“Harvard is in this purgatory. What is an international student to do?” said the Harvard Law School graduate, who declined to be named.
“PRIDE AND APPROVAL”
There also remained “this spectre of other actions” the government could take to block Harvard from having international students, she added.
The Ivy League institution has continually drawn Trump’s ire while publicly rejecting his administration’s repeated demands to give up control of recruitment, curricula and research choices.
“Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect, and all they’re doing is getting in deeper and deeper,” Trump said on Wednesday.
Harvard president Alan Garber got a huge cheer on Thursday when he mentioned international students attending the graduation with their families, saying it was “as it should be” – but Garber did not mention the Trump fight directly.
He received a standing ovation, which one student told AFP was “revealing of the community’s pride and approval.”
Garber has led the legal fightback in US academia after Trump targeted several prestigious universities, including Columbia, which made sweeping concessions to the administration, hoping to claw back US$400 million of withdrawn federal grants.
He has acknowledged that Harvard does have issues with antisemitism and that it has struggled to ensure that a variety of views can be safely heard on campus.
