The panicky emails began arriving in Erwin Chemerinsky's inbox within minutes after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Monday unveiled a new requirement that international students must take an in-person class this fall to be eligible for student visas.

Chemerinsky—dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law—days earlier had announced that all of the school's fall classes would be delivered remotely, and international students were troubled and confused about what the new policy would mean for them.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law

"They were expressing enormous anxiety," Chemerinsky said of the students who have contacted him over the past three days. "They are just panicked right now. I sent a letter to the law school community saying we will do everything we can to protect them."

Virtually every corner of higher education has been roiled in recent days by the unexpected changes to ICE's Student Exchange Visitor Program, and law school administrators are similarly grappling with how best to accommodate their international students. They are also concerned that the new regulations will further depress the number of foreign students who want to enroll at a U.S. law school in the fall.

"I think we're all incredibly disappointed and dismayed," said Sarah Kelly, vice dean for administration at St. John's University School of Law and the chair of the Association of American Law Schools' Section on Post-Graduate Legal Education. She noted that listservs and online forums for law school administrators who deal with international students have been inundated with discussion over the new regulations. "We know the richness that our international students in both J.D. and LL.M. programs add to U.S. legal education. This is really going to create a hardship for many of our students who are seeking to study in the United States."

ICE regulations limit the number of online credits that those here on international student visas may take, but the agency lifted that limit for the spring and summer semesters due to the COVID-19 pandemic—when virtually every college and university moved to online classes. Under the changes announced Monday, international students in fully online programs will have to leave the country or transfer to schools offering in-person or hybrid classes. Moreover, if schools offering a hybrid of online and in-person classes this fall are forced to move fully online due to changing public health conditions, international law students would have to return to their home countries mid-semester. (Thus far, most law schools have said they are pursuing hybrid models for the fall.)

Higher education experts say the changes are intended to pressure colleges and universities to reopen their campuses and dissuade them from remaining entirely online. International students are an increasingly important part of university budgets—they are more likely to pay full tuition than domestic students—and that holds true for law schools. The number of non-J.D. students at law schools, of which foreign attorneys seeking LL.M.s comprise a large proportion, hit an all-time high in 2019, according to data from the American Bar Association. A recent study found that foreign students now compose more than 3% of national J.D. enrollment and 7% of J.D. students at the top 20 law schools. International students accounted for more than 10% of 2019 J.D. graduates at eight different law schools, including Yale Law School; Harvard Law School; and Columbia Law School.

Harvard Law Dean John Manning sent an email to students Wednesday saying administrators are working across the school and the larger university to find solutions to the problems posed by the modified ICE regulations. Like Berkeley Law, Harvard Law is planning a fully remote online semester.

"Our international students, who come from every corner of the world, are an integral and indispensable part of our Harvard Law School community," Manning wrote. "In the days and weeks ahead, we will do all we can to help enable all of our students, from across the globe, to safely continue their law school education, earn their degrees, and become great lawyers and leaders in a time and in circumstances in which their talent and their commitment to the rule of law and the ideals of justice are badly needed."

On Wednesday, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology jointly filed a lawsuit against the government requesting a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction preventing the enforcement of the new ICE regulations.

"ICE's action leaves hundreds of thousands of international students with no educational options within the United States," reads the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. "Just weeks from the start of the fall semester, these students are largely unable to transfer to universities providing on-campus instruction, notwithstanding ICE's suggestion that they might do so to avoid removal from the country."

Chemerinsky said he expects a similar suit to be filed shortly with several Berkeley Law students as plaintiffs.

"I think there will be a lot of pressure on ICE to change the policy," he said. "I hope that very quickly there will be a nationwide preliminary injunction and that this will not have an impact. But it's difficult to see how this will all play out."

The modified regulations pose the biggest challenge to law schools such as Harvard and Berkeley that have planned to be entirely online. Berkeley is considering creating an in-person class just for international students so they would be eligible for visas, Chemerinsky said. The City University of New York School of Law, which is also planning for an all-online fall, is contemplating a similar move, said Dean Mary Lu Bilek on Wednesday.

"Our international student enrollment is a small but important segment of our student body," Bilek said said. "We are committed to working with each of them individually to determine how to best accommodate their health and safety and educational needs consistent with the ICE rules. One option we are considering is a required course for international students on the American legal system that includes site visits to courthouses and law offices."

The University of Connecticut School of Law, which is also planning to be fully online in the fall, held a webinar for international law students Wednesday and is planning another one Friday. Administrators have been inundated with questions from foreign students about how the new regulations will impact them, said Carrianna Field, director of graduate and exchange programs. The school is looking at options to accommodate them, including adding some in-person instruction just for foreign students.

"We have students who chose to stay in the spring because they thought it would be more difficult in their home countries because maybe their Internet isn't stable, or they are in a time zone that will make it difficult to take classes," Field said. "And now we're saying, 'Sorry. If you want to finish this degree, you have to leave.'"

Most law schools are moving ahead with hybrid models that mix online and in-person classes, but the new regulations still pose challenges to international law students on those campuses, Kelly noted. Some international students who intended to take all their fall classes online for health reasons will now be forced to take at least one class in person in order to remain in the country. And some international students at St. John's are having to rethink their course schedule because all the classes they had planned to take next semester are being given online, she added. They now have to find at least one class to take that will have an in-person element. Most law schools are now trying to work individually with international students to find solutions that work best for them, Kelly said.

It's unclear whether the new regulations will prompt current and incoming international students to change their plans or defer admission. The bulk of international law students at U.S. law schools are in LL.M. programs, and many were already planning to remain in their home countries and take their classes online, irrespective of change in ICE policy, Chemerinsky said. Berkeley typically has about 200 international students in its LL.M. program, but widespread delays in securing visas have prompted many incoming students to plan for online fall classes even before the new regulations came out, he said. Thus, it's current international J.D. students who are partway through their studies who may be hurt the most by the new regulation.

And many law schools—including St. John's—already saw fewer international students apply for the upcoming year, Kelly added. Deferral requests are also higher this year, and schools have adjusted their financial expectations accordingly.

"It has been clear for months that international enrollments this fall were going to be smaller than the previous two or three years," she said.