Trump lays out blueprint to deport pro-Palestinian foreign nationals

U.S. President Donald Trump issued a new executive order on Wednesday aimed at deporting any international students who express pro-Palestinian views or participate in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on university campuses. This order follows Trump’s vaguely worded travel ban last week that sought to deport individuals who “promote hateful ideologies.”

Combined with last week's executive order, this new executive action targeting students indicates that the Trump administration is focusing its efforts on eliminating pro-Palestinian activism on U.S. university campuses. The pro-Palestinian movement has grown exponentially since October 7, 2023, when Israel’s war on Gaza resulted in the deaths of nearly 50,000 Palestinians.

“Taken together, these two executive orders effectively ban all non-citizens, including green card holders, from criticizing the U.S. government, its institutions, or the state of Israel, on pain of deportation,” immigration lawyer Eric Lee told Middle East Eye. Lee represents several university students facing deportation for their involvement in Palestinian advocacy. “The latest order goes even further, attempting to transform universities into an arm of the Department of Homeland Security by forcing universities to ‘monitor’ students’ speech and writing in the classroom, as well as the teaching content of faculty, and ‘report’ them to authorities.”

The executive order, which is being touted as a measure to combat antisemitism, directs federal agencies to provide guidance to universities on how to screen foreign citizens for ineligibility for entry. The legal provision cited in the order states that any foreign citizen who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity” is inadmissible. The executive order calls for universities to monitor international students and report them so the government can “deport these foreigners.”

According to a statement released by the White House, Trump stated: “To all the resident foreigners who have joined the pro-jihad protests, we are putting you on notice: by 2025, we will find you and we will deport you.” He added, “I will also be swiftly canceling student visas for all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses that are radicalized like never before.”

While it could take months for the government to attempt to deport individuals—actions that would likely spark legal challenges—pro-Israel groups have already begun providing Trump with lists of individuals they want deported. Last week, a Zionist group called Beta said they sent Trump a list of 100 pro-Palestinian students and 20 faculty members they want deported.

Momodou Taal, an African studies PhD candidate at Cornell University, is also on the list. Taal is facing a de facto threat of deportation for his pro-Palestinian activism and is no stranger to attacks from pro-Israel groups. “At a fundamental level, we can see these executive orders as a response to pro-Palestinian advocacy,” Taal told Middle East Eye.

“It’s not surprising because for the last year and a half we’ve seen these people go to extreme lengths to suppress pro-Palestinian voices,” Taal said, referring to Zionist groups targeting students. “It’s also not surprising because we’ve seen these people shamelessly defend genocide. So, deporting someone is minor in comparison. If they can defend the indefensible, then I think deporting someone is very much in line with what they’ve been doing,” Taal added.

Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, pro-Palestinian demonstrations have erupted on university campuses across the U.S., calling for an end to the war and for their respective schools to divest from companies profiting from the war. Some universities have responded to these protests with police force, and at the University of California, Los Angeles, a pro-Israel mob attacked student protesters who had set up a Gaza solidarity encampment on campus.

Pro-Israel groups have repeatedly accused pro-Palestinian protests of being antisemitic. Middle East Eye investigated these claims at a demonstration at MIT, finding that they equated pro-Palestinian slogans with antisemitism and that claims that Jewish students were barred from class were false. Despite the false allegations, university administrations across the U.S. have cracked down on pro-Palestinian students and groups, with some student chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine being banned in New York.

The Biden administration has also condemned the protests, characterizing the term “intifada,” commonly used in pro-Palestinian rallies, as “hate speech.” Intifada refers to two separate Palestinian uprisings against Israeli occupation, characterized by mass protests, civil disobedience, and organized strikes.

While Trump has vowed to take a tougher stance against pro-Palestinian movements and other social justice movements on U.S. university campuses, Lee points out that the Biden administration and university authorities created the conditions for Trump to target these students. “Trump is drawing from the darkest traditions in American history, including the Alien and Sedition Acts and the Palmer Raids deportations of socialists and anarchist dissenters during World War I,” Lee said. “The road for these measures was paved by university administrations and the Biden administration, who have systematically suppressed pro-Palestinian and leftist speech for the last 16 months.”

U.S. universities began their new academic semester earlier this month, and despite the months-long crackdown on the pro-Palestinian student movement, protests have still taken place in places like Columbia University, which has quickly become a hub for student activism in the U.S. However, what impact the Trump administration and its latest set of executive orders will have on these protests remains to be seen.

Lee said that while Wednesday’s executive order targets pro-Palestinian speech from international students, the Trump administration’s aim is “not just to silence leftist speech from non-citizens but also to silence the citizen colleagues who have the right to hear and debate the views of non-citizens.” “The latest order even paves the way for the prosecution of U.S. citizens who participate in pro-Palestinian protests,” he said. He stressed that all of civil society needs to unite to oppose this move.

“Civil society urgently needs to stand up to stop Trump from turning the U.S. university system into an enforcement arm of Trump’s deportation machine,” he said. “Those who fail to stand up today because they disagree with the content of student protesters’ speech will only make it easier for Trump to silence them tomorrow.”

Civil rights organizations, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, as well as anti-Zionist organizations, such as Jewish Voice for Peace, have condemned the executive orders. Jewish Voice for Peace noted that the executive action stems from the Heritage Foundation’s “Esther Plan” report, “a blueprint for using the federal government and private institutions to dismantle the Palestinian solidarity movement and broader U.S. civil society under the guise of ‘combating antisemitism.’”

“This is a vile attempt to spread fear and suppress political dissent against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and to further the far-right’s broader anti-immigrant agenda,” Jewish Voice for Peace said in a statement. Other free speech groups, such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, have expressed concern over the executive order, saying that “revoking student visas should not be used to punish and filter out views that the federal government dislikes.” “The strength of our nation’s system of higher education comes from the widest exchange of viewpoints, even those that are unpopular or dissenting,” the group said.

Taal, who himself is currently banned from entering all but one building on Cornell University’s campus for his pro-Palestinian activism, said he has heard that some international students are now afraid to participate in pro-Palestinian protests on campus. But whether these executive orders will weaken the overall movement remains to be seen. “The purpose is to have a chilling effect, essentially to suppress the movement. It is the state’s way of suppressing the movement and suppressing any dissent against the pro-Israel position. Whether it will have the desired effect is yet to be seen,” he said. “I would hope that the American people, taking inspiration from the Palestinians, would be more steadfast in their position and still willing to come out to protest, but I think we will have to wait and see.”