The Trump administration expanded its immigration crackdown on Thursday, barring Microsoft Corp., Adobe Inc., and several prominent IT outsourcing companies from sponsoring foreign workers for permanent residency while opening fraud investigations into nine top research universities.

The far-reaching measures represent the White House’s most direct strike yet against high-skilled immigration programs, targeting corporate employers and higher education institutions that rely heavily on foreign talent.

Speaking at a White House news conference, Vice President JD Vance accused major corporations of misusing immigration channels to displace qualified domestic labor.

“You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants,” Vance said, claiming companies routinely circumvent recruitment rules by running obscure job advertisements in small-town newspapers to manufacture artificial labor shortages.

Vance singled out Microsoft, alleging it laid off roughly 6,000 U.S. employees last year, yet obtained 6,300 H-1B temporary visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. “If you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants,” Vance said. “Our message to Microsoft is: You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers.”

Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling said the suspensions stem from “multiple active federal investigations,” describing some firms as operating as “visa mills.” Under the action, the Department of Labor will halt both new and pending applications under the Permanent Labor Certification (PERM) program — a crucial legal step required before employers can sponsor foreign personnel for permanent resident status.

In addition to Microsoft and Adobe, the ban applies to major IT outsourcing firms Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, Capgemini, and HCL Technologies.

Microsoft swiftly pushed back on the administration’s characterization of its hiring practices. The company noted in a statement that 80% of its roughly 6,000 H-1B filings over the last fiscal year were submitted to extend or modify the status of existing staff rather than recruit new personnel.

“These were not to hire new people,” Microsoft said, clarifying that remaining petitions for new hires represented just 1% of its U.S. workforce and involved individuals already lawfully residing in the country.

Legal experts and former officials also questioned the strategic logic of the policy. Doug Rand, a former senior adviser at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Biden administration, termed the move “incoherent.”

“If the Trump administration were truly concerned that H-1B workers are ‘indentured servants,’ then the last thing they would do is block companies from helping their own H-1B workers get green cards,” Rand said, noting that green card holders gain permanent residency and can freely change employers or negotiate wages.

Federal officials also targeted exchange programs at elite universities. Vance identified multiple higher education institutions — Harvard University, Yale University, Stanford University, Brown University, UC Davis, Caltech, Arizona State University, and MIT — as subjects of formal inquiries into potential J-1 exchange visa fraud. Several institutions, including MIT, Brown, and the University of Pittsburgh, confirmed they had received federal subpoenas.

The announcements coincided with a scheduled White House ceremony where President Donald Trump awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, an Indian immigrant who arrived in the U.S. as an international student in 1988.