Colby-Sawyer College stands in support of a lawsuit filed by Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which sued the Trump administration Wednesday over guidance that foreign students enrolling in a full online course load may not remain in the United States during the upcoming semester.

Colby-Sawyer is supporting the lawsuit against new federal restrictions that place more than one million international students at risk of being deported to their home countries.

The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) restrictions, which were released on Monday, mandate that nonimmigrant students under F-1 or M-1 visas must take at least one in-person class in order to stay in the U.S., and those registered for a fully online fall course load will be barred from entering or staying in the U.S.

Colby-Sawyer’s international students – and international students across higher education – are vital members of our learning communities,” said Colby-Sawyer President Susan D. Stuebner. “To threaten deportation if the college has to shift to online learning is unnecessarily cruel and creates undo chaos for these members of our community.”

As colleges and universities around the nation are working to protect their students from the regulations, students across the U.S. are scrambling to register for hybrid and face-to-face classes to potentially avoid deportation.