BY JOHN K. WILSON

On July 6, the Trump Administration reached yet another new low in bigotry and incompetence, by decreeing that it will deport international students at colleges that choose to protect their students and faculty with online courses in the midst of a deadly pandemic. ICE announced, “The U.S. Department of State will not issue visas to students enrolled in schools and/or programs that are fully online for the fall semester nor will U.S. Customs and Border Protection permit these students to enter the United States.”

This move is apparently an effort to force colleges to hold classes in person despite the risks, or perhaps a xenophobic plan to deport international students (and defund the colleges that enroll them).

Harvard and MIT immediately filed a lawsuit against this “arbitrary and capricious” decision, saying it “reflects an effort by the federal government to force universities to reopen in-person classes.” The suit noted, “The effect — and perhaps even the goal — is to create as much chaos for universities and international students as possible.”

I hope that a reasonable judge will issue an injunction against these new rules. But we cannot wait and put all our hopes on a legal system already corrupted by large numbers of Trump appointees, and even an injunction could be overturned later this fall with disastrous consequences.

Colleges need to figure out a way to protect their international students from the expense, disruption, and danger of deportation while protecting all students and staff from the threat of Covid-19. The answer is for colleges to act immediately to manipulate the process.

The first response colleges must make is to modify their announcements so that none of them are “fully online” but instead have a hybrid model with some in-person classes. To be more precise, colleges should announce that one-on-one independent study classes will be permitted to be held in-person, at the agreement of the professor and the student. This will clearly meet the standard of being a campus with a hybrid model even if all other scheduled classes are held online.

However, that’s still not enough to protect international students. ICE requires colleges to submit a form “certifying that the program is not entirely online, that the student is not taking an entirely online course load this semester, and that the student is taking the minimum number of online classes required to make normal progress in their degree program.” The first and third parts are easy. The second requirement is the tricky part.

What is an entirely online course load? Under 8 CFR 214.2(f)(6)(i)(G), an online course is defined as one that “does not require the student’s physical attendance for classes, examination or other purposes integral to completion of the class.” Here is the answer: A professor can include this statement in the syllabus of a course: “All international students who must fulfill SEVP requirements for in-person classes with this course are required to have an in-person meeting with the instructor at some point during the course to be arranged.” By making it a course requirement, an in-person meeting becomes one of the “other purposes” integral to the completion of the class, and it no longer is considered an online class under ICE regulations. A stupid requirement for an in-person meeting is still a requirement, and it fulfills the letter of the law.

And the exact nature of that course requirement is up to the discretion of the instructor. If a professor decides to have a 30-second meeting standing 10 feet apart in the driveway of the professor’s home, that fulfills the requirement and the letter of the law. The college can simply require international students to take at least one class in the fall semester with a syllabus that includes this provision, which a professor can add to their syllabus at any point in the semester.

Of course, this entire process is ridiculous, because the ICE rule is ridiculous in the middle of a pandemic. Could ICE simply decide to reject any college that tries to pull this ridiculous maneuver and block their students? Perhaps. But the rule simply says that colleges must certify this, not that there must be a good reason for the in-person requirement. If the Trump Administration tried to reject these certifications that meet the letter of the law, it would be easy to get an injunction against a clear failure by ICE to follow its own regulations.

It might be possible that the Trump Administration would rewrite the regulations for Spring 2020 to restrict the meaning of an in-person course requirement. But by that time, in-person classes might be safe, or a new administration might be in office to reverse this idiocy.

What’s important right now is for colleges to act immediately to reassure international students that they will be able to stay in America and attend their college even if classes must be held online. Adopting these minor revisions to follow the letter of the law for in-person classes is the fastest and easiest way to meet these rules if litigation can’t stop them quickly.