One day before it was due to take effect, a federal court in Massachusetts postponed nationwide the Department of Homeland Security rule that would have ended the open-ended admission foreign students have held in the United States for four decades.
The order, issued on September 14, 2026, leaves in place "duration of status" — the framework under which an F-1 student is admitted for as long as the academic program lasts, rather than until a date stamped in a passport. The rule it halted had been published in the Federal Register on July 17 and carried an effective date of September 15.
What the rule would have done
DHS proposed replacing duration of status with fixed terms:
- F nonimmigrants (academic students): admission of up to four years, set by program length.
- J nonimmigrants (exchange visitors): admission for the program's duration plus a departure window.
- I nonimmigrants (foreign media representatives): up to 240 days, with narrower terms for holders of People's Republic of China passports.
Anyone needing longer — a doctoral candidate whose research runs past year four, a journalist on a multi-year posting — would have had to file for an extension of stay and wait for it to be adjudicated.
The scale is what made the rule contentious. DHS's own analysis counted more than 1.8 million F-status admissions, over 500,000 J-status admissions and about 37,330 I-status admissions in fiscal year 2024, and priced the rule at roughly $443.1 million to $448.6 million a year over the decade from 2027 to 2036.
Why the court stopped it
The challenge was brought by higher education and advocacy organizations, and the court found they were likely to win on the Administrative Procedure Act — the statute that requires a federal agency to show its reasoning.
According to the order, DHS likely failed on four counts: an inadequate cost-benefit analysis, no serious consideration of alternatives, insufficient response to the nearly 22,000 public comments the proposal drew, and no rational connection between the rule and the objectives the agency said it served.
That is a procedural defeat rather than a substantive one. Nothing in the order says the government may not move to fixed admission periods; it says this attempt did not explain itself well enough to survive.
What is still in force
Two things did not change. Restrictions on Curricular Practical Training — the work authorization that lets students take jobs tied to their coursework — remain in effect, so the ruling is not a blanket restoration of the pre-2026 landscape. And the existing rules on school transfers, program changes and practical training continue to apply as before.
For the roughly 1.5 million people on F and J status in the country, the practical effect is that the admission stamp in their passport still reads "D/S" — and that a second, better-documented version of this rule is the likelier next step, not its abandonment.
Reporting from the Federal Register, Envoy Global and Corporate Immigration Partners.
