A year ago, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposed new restrictions on visas for international students and journalists, limiting the former to four years and the latter to 240 days without a discretionary extension. The department portrayed those caps as necessary to combat visa fraud and protect national security. But as thousands of people pointed out during the 32-day public comment period, that rationale did not make much sense, and the downside was obvious: The rule would disrupt press coverage and deter foreign enrollment in U.S. universities, an important source of revenue for those institutions and a major driver of economic growth.
Unfazed by those objections, the DHS finalized its rule in July. Although that might seem like business as usual for a federal bureaucracy, the process that produced the rule was so illogical and heedless that it provoked a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of the visa limits while a lawsuit challenging them is pending. In a scathing decision this week, a federal judge in Massachusetts concluded that the DHS rule qualifies as "arbitrary and capricious" under the Administrative Procedure Act because the department did not offer a plausible justification, consider alternatives, estimate predictable costs, or meaningfully respond to the points raised by commenters.
