A new federal restriction on international students that could have posed challenges if McNeese State University needed to offer online-only courses due to the pandemic has been rescinded by the Trump administration.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced last week that international students in the U.S. whose schools switch to online-only classes for the fall semester will have to leave the country or risk violating their visa status.

In its announcement, the Student and Exchange Visitor Program said foreign students who do not transfer to in-person programs and remain in the U.S. while enrolled in online courses could face “immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal proceedings.”

Students taking in-person programs would be allowed to remain in the U.S., while schools with hybrid online/in-person courses would be required to certify their programs are not entirely online.

Up until this point, the SEVP had allowed foreign students to take their spring and summer 2020 courses online while remaining in the country in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

That all was to change when the fall semester began before the president stepped in.

The administration’s decision was announced Tuesday afternoon as a court hearing was getting underway over a lawsuit filed by Harvard and MIT against the new guideline. The state of California has also filed suit over the new restriction.

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs said federal immigration authorities agreed to pull the July 6 directive and “return to the status quo.”

The American Council on Education praised ICE’s pullback of the rule. The group said the policy was misguided from the start.

There are more than 1 million international students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities. Students forced to return to more-distant homes would face the risks of traveling during a pandemic, the financial burden of paying for an international airline ticket, broken apartment leases and additional visa fees when they return to the U.S.

Some could have also found their future career plans derailed.

The pandemic is far from over, so leniency with online courses shouldn’t end either.

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This editorial was written by a member of the American Press Editorial Board. Its content reflects the collaborative opinion of the Board, whose members include Crystal Stevenson, John Guidroz, Mike Jones and Jim Beam.