Above photo: Donald Trump speaking in Phoenix, Arizona, on June 6, 2024. Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia.
“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice.”
“Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” said a fact sheet released by The White House.
Donald Trump will sign an executive order to deport non-citizen university students who have participated in protests opposing the Gaza genocide.
“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” said the President in a fact sheet. “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”
Trump in antisemitism executive order:
“My Administration has fought and will continue to fight anti-Semitism in the United States and around the world.” pic.twitter.com/oyta7DgaYo
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) January 29, 2025
Although the order has not been issued yet, the White House has released materials in support of the order and unnamed White House officials have been quoted in the press saying the announcement can be expected as early as today.
These efforts are ostensibly being carried out to combat antisemitism, but are clearly being implemented to crack down on critics of Israel. “My promise to Jewish Americans is this: With your vote, I will be your defender, your protector, and I will be the best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House,” reads the fact sheet.
The order reportedly instructs the Justice Department to “aggressively prosecute terroristic threats, arson, vandalism and violence against American Jews” and “takes forceful and unprecedented steps to marshal all Federal resources to combat the explosion of antisemitism on our campuses and in our streets since October 7, 2023.”
The reported action has already been condemned by groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who called it “dishonest, overboard and unenforceable.”
“The revocation of student visas should not be used to punish and filter out ideas disfavored by the federal government,” said Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) Senior Scholar for Global Expression Sarah McLaughlin. “The strength of our nation’s system of higher education derives from the exchange of the widest range of views, even unpopular or dissenting ones.”
“We stand with the student protestors who so bravely put their bodies and academic careers on the line to save lives and demand an end to the Israeli military’s destruction of Gaza. As Jews we refuse to be pawns in the far-Right’s authoritarian takeover,” said Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Executive Director Stefanie Fox. “Trump and his cronies do not care about Jewish safety — in fact, they and the White Nationalists who support them are themselves the greatest threat to American Jews. They are waging a campaign against all those who are brave enough to challenge their power.”
Alia El-Assar, Director of Media Organizing at Adalah Justice Project, told Mondoweiss that lawmakers are embracing these draconian measures to instill fear in communities and dissuade people from speaking up about Israeli atrocities.
“We’re focused on protecting each other,” she said. “We don’t want to forget our power, particularly those of us who aren’t at risk of deportation. We need to make sure that we are coming out for our people, whether that be international students or others, we won’t allow panic to prevail within our communities.”
“The current system within the United States is one where the ruling class is profiting off of death and destruction,” she continued. “They’re siphoning resources out of our communities and putting the blame on Black and brown folks, on people who are speaking up for justice.”
Pro-Israel organizations and lawfare groups have been pushing for universities to crack down on Palestine activism for years, but have dramatically increased their efforts during the genocide.
The Zionist organization Betar even created a list of foreign students involved in Gaza protests in hopes that the Trump administration would deport them. “We have started commencing lists of Jew-hating foreign nationals on visas who support Hamas,” said Ross Glick, director of the organization’s U.S. chapter.
Continuing Campus Repression
While such efforts will seemingly increase under Trump, student activists were already facing suppression under the Biden administration.
Last fall Cornell University threatened British-Gambian graduate student Momodou Taal with a suspension after he participated in a campus protest. The suspension would have revoked Taal’s F-1 visa status. The school eventually backed down in response to a nationwide pressure campaign.
“I keep saying that these repressive tactics cannot be divorced from the issue itself,” Taal told Mondoweiss shortly after Cornell stopped pursing the suspension. “The issue is that it’s because it’s about Palestine because it, it touches the heart of university investment. It goes to the heart of for the heart of Empire.”
On the presidential campaign trail, Trump made it clear that he would target Palestine advocates as part of his vast deportation plan. “If you get me re-elected, we’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years,” he told a group of pro-Israel donors last May.
Muslim Ban 2.0
On his first day in office, Trump essentially launched a second “Muslim Ban,” signing an executive order that that directs his administration to compile a list of countries “for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries.”
The new order goes even further than Trump’s 2017 measure, adding language that allows the government to deny visas based on political opinions, beliefs, and cultural backgrounds. Many perceived the change as a means to target Palestine advocates.
“They learned from their ‘mistakes’ the last time around,” University of Colorado professor and legal scholar Maryam Jamshidi told Mother Jones. ““We know—based on statements that have been made by Trump and others—that new provisions will be used to target pro-Palestine protesters.”
“Muslim Ban 2.0” has been condemned by human rights groups and immigrant organizations.
“We cannot allow governments to continue to erode our First Amendment rights or to revive the fear and distrust that defined the post-9/11 era,” said The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) in a statement. “Standing against these regressive measures is our shared responsibility. If we permit this corrosion of rights for one community, we risk the freedoms of all.”