Meet Allison D Burroughs, judge who blocked Trump's SEVP action against Harvard
US District Judge Allison Dale Burroughs on Friday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a ban on international students at Harvard University
US District Judge Allison Dale Burroughs on Friday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a ban on international students at Harvard University by suspending the school's SEVP certification. She ruled that the government can’t enforce the ban, which it imposed the day before.
The Obama-appointed judge's ruling came hours after Harvard sued the government in a Boston federal court. Burroughs has granted the university a temporary restraining order, finding that it would sustain “immediate and irreparable injury” if the Department of Homeland Security directive went into effect.
This means Harvard will not be forced to stop enrolling international students immediately. The TRO will remain in place until the court rules on Harvard’s request for a longer-lasting injunction. A hearing on that request is set for May 29.
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Who is Judge Allison Dale Burroughs?
Allison Dale Burroughs is a US District Judge for the District of Massachusetts, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2014 and confirmed in January 2015. Born in Boston in 1961, she graduated cum laude from Middlebury College (BA, 1983) and the University of Pennsylvania Law School (JD, 1988).
Her legal career spans clerking for Judge Norma Shapiro (1988–89), serving as an Assistant US Attorney in Pennsylvania (1989–95) and Massachusetts (1995–2005), and practicing as a partner at Nutter McClennen & Fish (2005–14), where she handled complex criminal and civil cases.
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In 2017, she issued a TRO against Trump’s Executive Order 13769, blocking the removal of travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries, turning Boston Logan Airport into a safe haven. She also presided over a Harvard-MIT lawsuit challenging an ICE rule requiring international students to leave the US if taking online-only classes during COVID-19.
