New York, United States President Donald Trump sent a message to the student protesters who took part in the first-ever pro-Palestinian demonstrations last week.
It was a warning. And it was specifically intended for protesters who were immigrants.
“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”, Trump was quoted as saying in a White House fact sheet.
“I’ll also immediately revoke all Hamas sympathizers’ student visas on college campuses, which have experienced unprecedented radicalism.”
The statement was the most recent indication that the protests had not ended. If anything, under Trump’s second term, free-speech advocates and Palestinian rights supporters are bracing for a continued crackdown on the university activists who led demonstrations.
According to Sarah McLaughlin, a scholar at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), “the legal issues regarding deporting students for speech that would otherwise be protected in the US are complex.”
Do we want deportation as a result of expressing political views that the White House disapproves, though?
A plan to ‘ remove ‘ foreign students
A new executive order, signed on January 29, followed Trump’s statements. In order to combat anti-Semitism on campus, it opened the door for the deportation of foreign students.
The order pledges “immediate action” to “prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence”.
In order to accomplish that goal, it requests the secretary of education to compile a list of court cases involving anti-Semitism at colleges, universities, and institutions that teach kindergarten through 12th grade.
Additionally, the law mandates that all higher education institutions be instructed on how to “monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff” that are relevant to the anti-Semitism push.
If warranted, the government can then initiate “actions to remove such aliens”.
The Trump administration has called for the “explosion of anti-Semitism on our campuses and in our streets since October 7, 2023,” according to the order. On that day, fighters from the Palestinian armed group Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing an estimated 1, 139 people.
Israel launched a military offensive. For 15 months, Israeli bombs fell on the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, as its troops levelled hospitals, schools and neighbourhoods.
Officials are now hoping to get a more accurate picture of the death toll, which stands at 62, 000, with many of the victims being Palestinian women and children, now that a fragile ceasefire has been established.
Israeli military operations have been compared to genocide by UN experts, and concerns about human rights prompted thousands of students to stage protests.
Some set up encampments to denounce Israel’s actions. Other students protested and demanded that their universities stop funding Israeli businesses and those that supported the war.
Some protesters expressed dissatisfaction with the general criticism of Israel, a key US ally, but the protests were largely peaceful. Others accused the demonstrators of anti-Semitism, though protest leaders have denied such allegations.
Under pressure from donors and legislators, many universities cracked down on pro-Palestine activities on campuses. At the height of the 2024 protest movement, up to 3, 000 student protesters were detained.
“Censors and snitches”
In the meantime, questions of anti-Semitism in the protest movement reached the highest levels of government, with then-President Joe Biden pledging to take action.
Trump used the issue as part of his campaign because it also took place in the midst of a contentious US presidential election season.
He told donors in May that he would “throw them out of the country” and “take them out of the country,” according to The Washington Post.
Later, in July, Republicans published a party platform that reflected similar rhetoric. Its goals included “deporting pro-Hamas radicals and restoring our college campuses to patriotic values” among other things.
Trump even threatened to revoke funding and accreditation from colleges for failing to impose a sufficient ban on protesters.
The director of Palestine Legal, a group that defends the rights of Palestine advocates in the US, called Trump’s order last week “the latest in a growing list of dangerous, authoritarian measures aimed at imposing an ideological strangulation on schools by attempting to intimidate students into silence.”
She believes Trump’s order violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which protects free speech and the right to assembly. Additionally, she contends that the threat is even greater than the most recent pro-Palestinian movement.
Khalidi claimed that the effects of this executive order extend far beyond the Palestine movement.
It advocates for government agencies to find ways to censor and defy Trump’s agenda and targets universities as its censors and snitches.
Free-speech questions
Like other executive actions , Trump rushed to sign during the first days of his second term, the January 29 order is expected to face legal challenges.
First Amendment protections apply to “everyone in the United States,” according to Carrie DeCell, a senior staff lawyer at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, regardless of nationality or visa status.
“Deporting non-citizens on the basis of their political speech would be unconstitutional”, she wrote in a statement.
However, McLaughlin, the free speech advocate, pointed out that the federal government still “retains significant authority over the presence of foreign nationals in the country”.
That might have a chilling effect on vulnerable student protesters who rely on immigration documents like visas to stay in the country.
“This order, coupled with President Trump’s accompanying threat to deport what he deems ‘ Hamas sympathisers’, will suggest to international students that the rights promised on our nation’s campuses are not theirs to enjoy”, McLaughlin said.
“This is a loss for these students, whose speech will likely be chilled, and for their peers, who will be deprived of the ability to hear, engage with, and challenge those views”.
In a statement for the free-speech organisation PEN America, Kristen Shahverdian said Trump’s order was “reminiscent of McCarthyism”, a period in history when the US government sought to root out and ostracise people deemed “subversive”.
“While the stated goal of this executive order is combating anti-Semitism, instead it significantly risks creating an authoritarian-like army of informers who will be empowered to target international students, faculty and staff for their views”, she explained.
“This order will not foster dialogue and understanding on campus or combat bigotry,” the statement states. Rather, it will further worsen a climate of fear and mistrust”.
Combating anti-Semitism
Critics questioned whether Trump’s directive would actually accomplish its stated goal of reducing anti-Semitism in addition to raising issues of free speech in the executive order.
In a statement, Ben Olinsky, a fellow at the Center for American Progress, accused the Trump administration of weaponising anti-Semitism “for political gain”.
“It does nothing to keep Jewish students or any other Americans safe from hate or prevent terrorism, which pose legitimate threats to America’s Jewish communities”, Olinsky wrote.
“Instead, it forsakes education and dialogue while attacking protected political speech. It’s clear that Trump’s real goal is to silence opposing voices”.
While reports of anti-Semitism did rise over the past year, so too did incidents of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate.
From January to July 2024, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organisation, tallied 4, 951 complaints, a 69 percent increase over the same period the previous year.
The organization criticized the fact that those events were not taken seriously in the wake of Trump’s executive order.
According to CAIR, “the order completely disregards actual and documented instances of pro-Israel extremists using anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim language against American college students.”
It also called the order an “attempt to smear the many Jewish, Muslim, Palestinian and other college students who protested” the war together.
Other critics, like Olinksy, argued that if Trump were serious about combatting anti-Semitism, he would distance himself from groups like the far-right Proud Boys.
“If President Trump really cared]about] the very real rise in acts of anti-Semitism, he would start by firing Elon Musk for making what appeared to be a Nazi salute last week”, Olinsky also said.
The troubling rise in anti-Semitism that we see today is being aided by President Trump’s repeated refusal to condemn it from the perspective of his own supporters.
