Trump decree paves way for ‘Muslim ban’, targeting pro-Palestine students

Washington, DC – Civil rights organizations in the United States are raising concerns over a directive that, according to them, will stifle travel to countries with Muslim majority who are in the country.

According to experts, the executive order, which was made public on Monday, may also be used to target illegal aliens who are already present in the US and impose sanctions on foreign students who support Palestinian rights.

Deepa Alagesan, a lawyer at the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), an advocacy group, said the new order is “bigger and worse” than the “xenophobic” travel ban that Trump imposed on several Muslim-majority countries in 2017 during his first term.

According to Alagesan, “the worst part of it right now is that it’s trying to use these same justifications as a basis to force people out of the US.”

Administration officials are required by the new order to compile a list of nations “for which vetting and screening information is so insufficient as to warrant a partial or complete suspension of national admission from those nations.”

It goes further, however. It calls for collecting “relevant” information about the citizens’ “actions and activities” and identifying the number of citizens who have entered the US from those nations since 2021 while Joe Biden has been president.

The White House then directs the removal of foreign nationals from those nations “when information is identified that supports the exclusion or removal”

Trump’s executive order also says the administration must ensure that foreign citizens, including those in the US, “do not bear hostile attitudes” towards American citizens, culture or government and “do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists”.

Advocates describe the order as “funny.”

Alagesan cautioned that the decree, known as the “Muslim ban,” could cause more harm to immigrant families than the 2017 travel restrictions, which are collectively known as the “Muslim ban.”

She criticized the order’s vague language as “scary” because it appears to give US agencies broad authority to make recommendations against those the administration wants to make.

Alagesan told Al Jazeera, “It’s just another method to keep people out, to get people out, to break up families, to incite fear, to make sure that people know they’re not welcome and that the government will use its force against them,” adding at its core.

Since its publication, other advocacy organizations have also criticized the order.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) said the decree goes further than the 2017 “Muslim ban” by giving the government “wider latitude to use ideological exclusion” to deny visas and remove people from the US.

“ADC calls on the Trump administration to stop stigmatizing and targeting entire communities, which only sows division”, the group said in a statement.

The president has long argued that the country’s commitment to freedom of expression now contradicts his new executive order in a clear way.

The Muslim Public Affairs Council also issued a warning in a statement that “de facto Muslim bans” could be achieved by strengthening vetting measures for particular nations.

Maryam Jamshidi, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School, said the order appears to revive the travel ban from Trump’s first term, while pushing a right-wing agenda in the broader culture wars.

Jamshidi added that some sections of the decree specifically target Palestinians and supporters of Palestinian rights.

“The right is very invested in continuing this notion that foreigners, people who are Black, brown, Muslim — not white Judeo-Christian, effectively — are threatening ‘ real Americans'”.

“Ugliest possible action”

Trump told aides in 2018 that he should accept more immigrants from places like Norway than those from Haiti, El Salvador, and other “s***hole countries,” according to several US media outlets.

Many right-wing politicians — including Trump’s current vice president, JD Vance — have embraced the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which posits that there is an effort to replace native-born Americans with immigrants.

Trump’s most recent order warns against using foreigners to sabotage or replace American culture.

Still, experts say it is unlikely to be used as a mass deportation vehicle.

According to Alagesan, the government “gives marching orders” to the organizations to basically opine to remove people the president has decided he doesn’t want here by using the most absurd legal frameworks and flaws,” he said.

Despite that, there are still laws that restrict the types of detentions that can be used, and detainees who are facing deportation proceedings also have protections.

Jamshidi added that it is unclear how the immigration law would be used to deport people, noting that it is still unclear whether the administration has the authority to remove foreign nationals.

The immigration and nationality act section, which gives the president the authority to “restrict entry to the US for any class of aliens,” is used to support the decree.

“This is probably not a blanket deportation charge”, Jamshidi said.

She cautioned, however, that the decree could provoke further inquiries into Israeli citizens and deter political activities, particularly those that might conflict with the administration’s policies.

Efforts to deport student activists

The order directs US officials to make recommendations to “protect” citizens from foreigners who “promote or call for sectarian violence, the overthrow or replacement of the culture on which our constitutional Republic rests, or who offer assistance, advocacy, or support for foreign terrorists.”

According to Jamshidi, the phrase “certainly involves foreign nationals, including foreign students who are engaging in Palestine advocacy.”

Jamshidi claimed Trump’s edict could be used to target Palestinian rights advocates on student visas because pro-Israel politicians frequently refer to campus activists as “pro-Hamas.”

Trump and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, have both previously requested deportation of foreign students.

As Palestinian solidarity protests swept the country’s universities following the outbreak of the war on Gaza, Israel’s supporters, especially Republicans, painted student demonstrators as a threat to campus safety.

In a letter Rubio wrote to the Biden administration in October 2023, urging it to oust international students who had marched in support of Palestinians.

The letter drew parallels between student protesters and the 9/11 attackers. The terrorists carried out the most deadly attack on American soil on September 11, 2001, according to the article.

The letter read, “Sadly, twenty-two years later, our country is witnessing public displays from terrorist sympathizers taking to the streets and condoning Hamas’ brutal attacks against the State of Israel.”

The 2024 Republican Party platform also calls for deporting “pro-Hamas radicals” to make college campuses “safe and patriotic again”.

“Broader implications”

Dima Khalidi, director of the advocacy group Palestine Legal, said it is “clear” that Trump’s recent executive order was crafted to specifically target Palestinian rights supporters.

She added that, while the decree does not specify Israel, pro-Israel groups have been trying to portray criticism of the US ally as not just anti-Israel or even anti-Semitic but as “un-American”.

According to Khalidi, “We have to connect it to this order with the larger ideological imposition that is taking place and a component of the larger purging that Trump appears to be very intent on carrying out.”

She claimed that because of their viewpoints and attempts to stifle free speech, the Trump administration wants to use the broader discretion in immigration law to restrict Palestinian rights supporters.

“They are really painting a picture for people of what is acceptable, what is not, what is American, what is not, what is patriotic, what is not”, Khalidi told Al Jazeera.

Critics say the bottom line is that, while Trump’s first “Muslim ban” targeted travellers from several Muslim-majority countries, this order has farther-reaching consequences, including about what it means to be an American.

For example, the decree calls for measures to ensure the “proper assimilation” of immigrants and “promote a unified American identity”.

Jamshidi claimed that the ban’s initial implementation has “broader implications for all kinds of groups.”

Source: Aljazeera