STANFORD, Calif. (Diya TV) — Harvard, Yale and Stanford are just three universities among the 17 that recently launched a legal challenge to President Donald Trump’s travel ban on refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority nations entering the US, saying it has “serious and chilling implications.”

The schools said the ban threatens their ability to attract the world’s best and brightest talent, students that are sought out to “meet their goals of educating tomorrow’s leaders from around the world.”

Official paperwork was filed in New York federal court Monday, in support of an existing lawsuit. The government has argued the case should be dropped since no one is being held in custody. President Trump signed an executive order at the end of January blocking entry to the US by people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

The order stopped Syrian refugees from entering the country indefinitely and immediately halted the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days.

The universities wrote in a joint statement: “By prohibiting persons from freely travelling to and from this country, the executive order divides students and their families, impairs the ability of American universities to draw the finest international talent, and inhibits the free exchange of ideas.”

Despite the block on the travel ban, the schools said it had already had a negative effect and argued the potential for harm continued.

“While the Executive Order is currently limited to seven countries, its damaging effects have already been widely felt by American universities,” the schools said in their friend-of-the-court brief.

Around 10 percent of Yale’s faculty come from abroad, and approximately 65 percent of its postdoctoral research community comes from the international community. More than 42,000 scholars, including 62 Nobel Laureates and 813 Members of the National Academies of including the Sciences, Engineering and Arts have expressed their opposition to the travel ban, the lawsuit said.