One international student at Harvard said she’s planning on staying in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for now, but added the fight between the university and the White House is “disorienting, frustrating (and) confusing” for her and her peers.
“I’m not planning on leaving the country because I know that if I leave, I might have a hard time being readmitted at the border,” Aleksandra Conevska told CNN.
It comes after a federal district judge said she will order the Trump administration to not make any changes to Harvard’s student visa program indefinitely.
The court hearing Thursday morning came after the administration’s decision earlier this month to ban the school from enrolling international students.
Conevska, who is Canadian, said while she remains on campus, she will be checking federal dockets and making sure that the injunction remains in place. “I don’t want to end up undocumented unknowingly,” she said.
Still, the government’s targeting of international students at the Ivy League school is creating an “unsettling feeling,” Conevska said, adding she wants to stay at least until she finishes her degree.
She said she feels as though international students are an “attractive pawn” for President Donald Trump and his administration to use to “try to get concessions out of Harvard.”
“I think we are just caught in the crossfires of this culture war that the Trump administration is engaging in, and it’s convenient for them to target us,” she said.
