Trump administration formally subpoenas Harvard University over foreign student information

FIRST ON FOX: President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent administrative subpoenas to Harvard University today over information related to the criminality and misconduct of foreign students on its campus. 

The agency criticized the Ivy League school’s “refusal to cooperate” with past information requests regarding Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), which provides visas for non-citizens to study in the US. 

“We tried to do things the easy way with Harvard,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Fox News Digital. “Now, through their refusal to cooperate, we have to do things the hard way. Harvard, like other universities, has allowed foreign students to abuse their visa privileges and advocate for violence and terrorism on campus.”

Banners on the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library at the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Tuesday, May 27, 2025. (Sophie Park/Bloomberg)

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“If Harvard won’t defend the interests of its students, then we will.”

The administrative subpoena is the latest legal move in the battle between the Trump Administration and the elite university. The SEVP has been a key issue after anti-Semitic protests raged across campus amid Israeli and Palestinian conflicts, eventually forcing an apology from Harvard president Alan Garber.

Sources at DHS told Fox News Digital that the subpoenas are the only option left for the agency after the university repeatedly refused non-coercive requests to provide the information. The department has been seeking relevant records, communications, and other documents related to immigration laws or crimes since January 1, 2020. 

Demonstrators gather on Cambridge Common to protest Harvard’s stance on the war in Gaza and show support for the Palestinian people, outside Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, o =n April 25, 2025.  (JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)

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Refusing to comply with an administrative subpoena carries heavy consequences such as civil penalties, criminal charges, contempt of court, and/or audits and inspections of an organization. 

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem had previously requested Harvard to provide information regarding criminal misconduct in April of this year, pledging that noncompliance would result in revoking the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. 

Harvard sent some information to DHS following the initial request, though Noem deemed the Ivy League University’s data as an “insufficient, incomplete and unacceptable response.”

In late May, DHS moved to formally revoke Harvard’s SEVP, impacting roughly a quarter of Harvard’s student body and preventing the university from issuing student visas and enrolling international students. 

President Donald Trump speaks with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem as they tour a migrant detention center, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” located at the site of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Florida, on July 1, 2025.  (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP)

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Harvard responded to Noem’s canceling of the program with a lawsuit titled President and Fellows of Harvard College v. DHS, alleging that the Trump administration’s decision to block the SEVP was unconstitutional and retaliatory.

“It is the latest act by the government in clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the “ideology” of its faculty and students,” Harvard wrote in its May complaint. 

U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs of Massachusetts, who was nominated by President Barack Obama in 2014, then granted a temporary restraining order request from Harvard after the lawsuit was filed.

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The ongoing temporary restraining order allows Harvard to continue issuing visa documents and enrolling students through the Student and Exchange Visitor Program.

Fox News Digital reached out to Harvard University but did not receive a response. 

Preston Mizell is a writer with Fox News Digital covering breaking news. Story tips can be sent to Preston.Mizell@fox.com and on X @MizellPreston