By KoKo Huang and Gregory McCall

On July 6, 2020, the Student Exchange Visitor Program of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced that nonimmigrant F-1 and M-1 students attending schools operating entirely online may not remain in the United States if taking a full online course load. Subject to certain restrictions, F-1 students who are attending schools adopting a hybrid model with a mixture of online and in-person classes may remain in the United States if they take more than one class or three credit hours online. F-1 students attending schools operating under normal in-person classes are bound by existing regulations and may only take a maximum of one class or three credit hours online. A number of universities, including Harvard and MIT, are challenging this in court.

Update: The Trump administration has retracted this directive. Please see our summary here.