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16 International NCAA Athletes Suing U.S. Government Over Immigration Policies

Jared Anderson
by Jared Anderson 3

December 08th, 2020 News

16 international student-athletes are suing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over restrictions keeping them from their campuses and sports teams.

Yahoo News reports that 15 of the 16 are signed to play sports at UCLA, and the other from Loyola Marymount.

Over the summer, ICE announced that if a school was offering only online courses, international students at that school would not be allowed to stay in the United States on student visas. Those students would have to leave the country to complete their online courses or transfer to a school with in-person classes.

That announcement was widely criticized. Harvard and MIT, backed by multiple other schools, asked a court to bar DHS and ICE from enforcing the rule. A federal judge announced in July that DHS and ICE would have to walk the rule back and allow students to remain in the United States on their student visas.

But ICE later clarified that it would only allow returning international students. New students coming to the United States for school would not be allowed to enter the country unless they were actively enrolled at a school before March 9.

The lawsuit focuses on incoming freshmen or new student-athletes, like Australian basketball player Izzy Anstey, who had signed with UCLA, but is now unable to enter the country to compete with the team for her freshman year.

The suit claims that the distinction between returning students and new students is arbitrary, and unfairly harms first-year students. Per Yahoo, the suit could be heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals as soon as Friday.

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Swimmer A
3 years ago

A lot of DHS and ICE policies have no application in keeping the public safe. Efforts like this are purely meant to frustrate immigrants, in hopes of discouraging immigration. These students will probably win the lawsuit, but just creating this headache is part of their strategy.

Falcon
Reply to  Swimmer A
3 years ago

Not so. Without in person classes, they could be anywhere. No way to track them. Must have a way to track immigrants, or have no border.

SwimFani
3 years ago

Good luck

About Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson swam for nearly twenty years. Then, Jared Anderson stopped swimming and started writing about swimming. He's not sick of swimming yet. Swimming might be sick of him, though. Jared was a YMCA and high school swimmer in northern Minnesota, and spent his college years swimming breaststroke and occasionally pretending …

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