On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order “to combat anti-Semitism” that allows for a broad crackdown on pro-Palestine speech, including deporting demonstrators on student visas.
The order, titled “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism,” asks federal agencies to report within 60 days all ways to combat antisemitism, including identification of “all civil and criminal authorities or actions.” Definitions in the order are vague: It re-establishes a prior Trump push on antisemitism from 2019 and implies antisemitism includes expressions of anti-Zionism.
Trump was more blunt in an attached fact-sheet released with the executive order. “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 said. “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”
As usual, the meaning of “Hamas sympathizer” was left ill-defined, leaving many pro-Palestine protesters at risk.
“We will find you, and we will deport you.”
Notably, in a section titled “Additional Measures To Combat Campus Anti-Semitism,” Trump recommends that colleges and universities be “familiarized” with American law on “inadmissible aliens.” The order then says these “institutions may monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff relevant to those grounds and for ensuring that such reports about aliens lead, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove.”
The order does not explicitly require schools to deport anyone—nor does it immediately cancel anyone’s visa. Instead, it puts the ball in the universities’ court: Will they collaborate in the deportation of Trump’s political enemies, or will they stand up for their students?
Dima Khalidi, of the advocacy organization Palestine Legal, said in a statement the order is meant to intimidate, “aimed at enforcing an ideological strangulation on schools by attempting to scare students into silence about Israel’s genocide in Gaza with threats of prosecution and deportation.”
“The implications of this executive order go far beyond the Palestine movement,” Khalidi added. “It encourages government agencies to find ways to target any dissent from Trump’s agenda, and aims to enlist universities themselves as its censors and snitches.” Some students who participated in pro-Palestine protests quietly locked their social media accounts on Wednesday. Others asserted that they would not be intimidated.
This order “effectively illegalizes criticism of Israel for non-citizens, [including] green card holders,” Michigan immigration attorney Eric Lee said on X. “This will impact what students say in class, what they write in essays, what they tell their professors in office hours. This chills the speech of the entire population.”
