On Wednesday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to combat antisemitism and promised to expel college students and others who participated in pro-Palestinian protests but were not citizens. “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 in the fact sheet. According to the president, who reiterated a 2024 campaign promise, “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”
The proposed measure would violate constitutional free expression rights, according to rights groups and legal experts, and it would probably face court challenges. If Trump attempted to enforce the order, a sizable Muslim advocacy group called the Council on American-Islamic Relations said it would think about contesting it in court. “Everyone in the United States, including foreign nationals attending American universities, is protected by the First Amendment,” stated Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute. “Deporting non-citizens on the basis of their political speech would be unconstitutional.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrations erupted on US college campuses for several months following the Hamas attacks and the Israeli invasion of Gaza, a Palestinian coastal enclave. A spike in hate crimes and occurrences against Jews, Muslims, Arabs, and other people of Middle Eastern heritage was reported by civil rights organizations.
According to the fact sheet, the order requires that department and agency officials provide recommendations to the White House within 60 days regarding all criminal and civil authorities that could be utilized to combat antisemitism. The apparent connection of criticism of Israel with claimed antisemitism severely concerned the Arab American Institute, a neutral human rights organization, according to Maya Berry, executive director of the organization. Berry claimed that the injunction will stifle free expression in the United States.
Sourc: Reuters
