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Trump directs a crackdown on demonstrators who support Palestine. Images courtesy of REUTERS
On January 29, US President Donald Trump pledged to deport foreign college students and others participating in pro-Palestinian demonstrations and signed an executive order to combat antisemitism.
Justice Department Takes Action on Antisemitism
The Justice Department will take “immediate action” to prosecute “terroristic threats, arson, vandalism, and violence against American Jews” and mobilize all federal resources to combat what it described as “the explosion of antisemitism on our campuses and streets” since the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, according to a fact sheet on the order.
Trump’s Pro-Jihad Protest Promises
“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 take away you,” Trump stated in the fact sheet.
Echoing a 2024 campaign pledge, the president declared, “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathisers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”
Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute
The proposed measure would violate constitutional free expression rights, according to rights groups and legal experts, and it would probably face court challenges.
“Everyone in the United States, including foreign nationals attending American universities, is protected by the First Amendment,” stated Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute. “Deporting non-citizens on the basis of their political speech would be unconstitutional.”
If Trump attempted to enforce the order, a sizable Muslim advocacy group called the Council on American-Islamic Relations said it would think about contesting it in court.
US College Campus Pro-Palestinian Demonstrations
Pro-Palestinian demonstrations erupted on US college campuses for several months following the Hamas attacks and the Israeli invasion of Gaza, a Palestinian coastal enclave. A spike in hate crimes and incidents against Jews, Muslims, Arabs, and other people of Middle Eastern heritage was reported by civil rights organizations.
According to the information sheet, the order mandates that department and agency chiefs provide recommendations to the White House within 60 days regarding all civil and criminal authorities that could be utilized to combat antisemitism.
Injunction aims to stifle free expression in the US
It demands that all court cases involving K–12 schools, colleges, and universities be listed and examined, as well as any claims of civil rights violations related to pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations that might result in the expulsion of “alien students and staff.”
Many pro-Palestinian demonstrators claimed they were protesting against Israel’s military invasion of Gaza, where health officials believe more than 47,000 people have been killed, and denied backing Hamas or committing antisemitic crimes.
The apparent connection of criticism of Israel with claimed antisemitism severely concerned the Arab American Institute, a neutral human rights organization, according to Maya Berry, executive director of the organization. Berry claimed that the injunction will stifle free expression in the United States.
