Trump signs order to combat ‘antisemitism’, targets deportations

US president Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday instructing federal agencies to identify ‘all available civil and criminal authorities’ to ‘combat antisemitism’. These include finding ways to deport anti-Semitic activists who violate the law.

The order requires agency and department leaders to make recommendations to the White House within 60 days and outlines plans for the Justice Department to investigate ‘pro-Hamas graffiti and threats’, including on college campuses.

‘Jewish students have faced a relentless barrage of discrimination, denial of access to campus common areas and facilities, including the library and classrooms, and intimidation, harassment, and physical threats and assaults,’ the order said.

The presidential order emphasizes that it will use all available and appropriate legal tools to ‘prosecute, eliminate, or otherwise hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence’.

The presidential order provides for the deportation of resident aliens, including students on visas, who broke the law as part of anti-Israel protests on campuses following Operation Aqsa Flood, which began on 7 October 2023.

The order states that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Education and the Minister of Internal Security will include in their reports recommendations for higher education institutions to familiarize themselves with the grounds for ‘inadmissibility’.

These institutions would thus be empowered to monitor and report on the activities of foreign students and staff related to these grounds, and to ensure that such reports on foreigners, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, lead to investigations and, if necessary, actions to deport such foreigners.

Last month, six Republican-led House committees issued a report calling for greater efforts by the federal government to combat anti-Semitism, including by conditioning federal aid to universities on stricter policies against anti-Semitic bias.

The report focused on Columbia University, the site of a large camp with multiple alleged incidents of documented ‘anti-Semitic’ remarks against both pro-Israel activists and Jewish students and noted that the allegedly permissive universities received $2.7 billion in federal funding in fiscal year 2023.

The State Department and the Department of Homeland Security under President Joe Biden turned down requests for records on the number of visa holders among these protesters, according to a report by House Republicans.

As a candidate, Trump called for the deportation of pro-Hamas students in the United States on visas, and last week signed a separate executive order that appeared to imply steps towards this goal.

It included a section requiring the United States to ensure that ‘admitted aliens and aliens already in the United States’ do not ‘support designated foreign terrorists’, but its intended effect was not immediately clear.