An immigration judge has found the U.S. government’s initial deportation case against Kseniia Petrova, a Russian-born Harvard scientist held in ICE detention, to be legally deficient, her attorney said, raising questions about whether the case can move forward.

The preliminary immigration hearing, held in Jena, Louisiana, included three trial attorneys and a deputy chief counsel from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Petrova’s attorney Greg Romanovsky described their presence as unusual for an early-stage proceeding.

A day after Harvard sued the Trump administration over its decision to freeze billions in federal funds to the school, more than 180 higher education leaders from around the country released a joint statement on Tuesday condemning the administration’s efforts to control universities.

The government’s “political interference” and “overreach” is “now endangering higher education in America,” they wrote.

The Trump administration has gone to war with elite universities, even as it claims its latest missive was sent by mistake. Its approach, as in many other policy areas, has been to shoot first and ask questions later. Power seems to grow out of the barrel of a tweet, with punitive action favoured over due process and principle. This might achieve results in the short term, but cannot win a battle of ideas that by definition requires a consistent philosophical stance.

Harvard University has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration claiming that its freezing of federal grants worth billions of dollars is unlawful.

Its president, Alan M Garber, announced the action on Monday in a letter to the university community which said the $2bn funding freeze would hamper critical disease research.

Harvard, the world's richest university, last week rejected a list of demands that the Trump administration said was designed to curb diversity initiatives and fight anti-semitism at the school.

Harvard University filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration after it pulled over $2 billion in federal funding to the Ivy League institution over accusations the school is not doing enough to target antisemitism.

Harvard University announced Monday that it is suing the Trump administration in federal court, seeking to block a freeze on more than $2.2 billion in research grants.

The move follows Harvard's refusal to comply with a series of sweeping demands from the administration, which included limiting campus activism, altering admissions policies, and restructuring university governance. According to Harvard, the freeze came just hours after the university said it would not acquiesce to the government's orders.

Harvard University is suing President Donald Trump's administration for threatening to withhold federal funding if the school did not comply with its list of demands.

The lawsuit, filed in Massachusetts federal court, asks a judge to block the funding freeze from going into effect, arguing the move is "unlawful and beyond the government's authority."

In it, lawyers for the university argue that the administration is unlawfully using billions of dollars in federal funding as "leverage to gain control of academic decision-making at Harvard."

The Trump administration has grown so furious with Harvard University after a week of an escalating dispute between the two sides that it is planning to pull an additional $1 billion of the school’s funding for health research, according to people familiar with the matter.  

Trump administration officials, the people said, thought the long list of demands they sent Harvard last Friday was a confidential starting point for negotiations.

President Trump and Harvard University are at daggers drawn, and the battle promises to play out on the national stage for some time. Trump wants Harvard to change its ways, not only when it comes to the lax handling of disruptive demonstrations and antisemitic harassment, but also in the matter of the university’s pervasive leftist bias. Harvard, which seemed at least tentatively open to changes in its disciplinary practices, has drawn the line at the Trump administration’s insistence on monitoring and redressing its ideological imbalance.