President Donald Trump is ordering the deportation of foreign students who took part in pro-Hamas protests on college campuses in the US as he launches a wide-ranging crackdown on anti-Semitism.
A new executive order will target resident aliens – including students with visas – who broke laws during demonstrations following the October 7, 2023 attacks in Israel.
Trump said he would instruct his Justice Department to ‘aggressively prosecute terroristic threats, arson, vandalism and violence against American Jews’.
He added: ‘To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice… we will find you, and we will deport you.
‘I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathisers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.’
It was the latest in a slew of orders that Trump has signed since becoming President as he looks to fulfill his campaign promises.
Many universities, particularly Columbia University in New York City, became the site of pro-Palestinian protests last year during the Israel-Hamas war
The students involved made radical demands that their universities sever financial ties to Israel and that the US end its military support for its longtime ally.
President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Wednesday to combat anti-Semitism
Trump’s latest order gives leaders of government agencies and departments 60 days to provide the White House with recommendations on how to identify anti-Semitic threats.
It comes as the US President invited Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House next week. He will become the first foreign leader to visit in Trump’s second term in office.
The US is pushing Israel and Hamas to keep its ceasefire in place. Talks about the ceasefire’s more difficult second phase, which aims to end the war, begin next Monday.
Trump’s latest executive order, due to be signed on Wednesday, is his second focusing on anti-Semitism.
He signed another executive order last week calling for the removal of foreign visa holders who ‘advocate for, aid or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security’.
During a rally in New Jersey last May, Trump promised: ‘When I am President, we will not allow our colleges to be taken over by violent radicals. And if you come here from another country and try to bring jihadism or anti-Americanism or anti-Semitism to our campuses, we will immediately deport you.’
He also tackled the issue in his first term.
In 2019, Trump signed an executive order instructing federal officials to expand the interpretation of the Civil Rights Act to include ‘discrimination rooted in anti-Semitism’.
This added anti-Semitism to the list of prohibited behaviour for programmes which receive federal funding.
During the college campus protests, some Republicans wanted to use that order to take away federal funding from universities which defended the demonstrations as free speech.
Republicans denounced the protests during the 2024 election campaign as an example of liberal bias at elite universities.
Several House committees, led by Republicans, investigated federal funding to colleges and threatened to withhold research grants and other government support.
And they issued a report calling for more to be done to address anti-Semitism.
Since the ceasefire announcement between Israel and Hamas, college protests have subsided.
Pro-Palestinian students occupy a lawn at Columbia University in April
Police arrest protesters during demonstrations at The City College Of New York in April 2024
State troopers arrest a man at a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Texas in 2024
The controversy over the protests led to a slew of university presidents – including Harvard’s – to resign.
At a Congressional hearing last year, many Ivy league presidents struggled to answer whether ‘calling for the genocide of Jews’ would violate each university’s code of conduct.
Republican Elise Stefanik, who Trump has nominated to become ambassador to the United Nations, posed the question.
She later said it became the highest-viewed Congressional hearing in history.
