Trump signs order that cancels student visas and deports pro-Palestinian protesters

The order accuses students of being anti-Semitic and 'Hamas sympathisers'

Pro-Palestinian protesters gather outside New York University buildings on May 3, 2024. Getty Images / AFP

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US President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order that would revoke the visas of foreign students and others who took part in pro-Palestinian protests, as part of an effort to combat anti-Semitism.

An advance fact sheet seen by The National said the Justice Department would take “immediate action” to prosecute “terroristic threats, arson, vandalism and violence against American Jews”.

The document said the order would authorise federal resources to combat an “explosion of anti-Semitism on our campuses and streets", after the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and led to the 15-month war on Gaza.

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the … protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you and we will deport you,” Mr Trump wrote in the fact sheet. “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathisers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

Israel's war on Gaza, which has killed more than 47,400 Palestinians and reduced much of coastal territory to rubble, started widespread protests on US college campuses.

Student groups set up tent camps and staged sit-ins and protests as they demanded a ceasefire, a US arms embargo on Israel, and called on their universities to severe ties with Israel and Israeli institutions.

Universities, including prestigious facilities such as Columbia and NYU, moved to crack down on pro-Palestinian student activism, saying many of the slogans and intentions were anti-Semitic, and their acts were disrupting classes.

Civil rights groups and law-enforcement agencies have documented a rise in anti-Semitism as well as rising anti-Arab, Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian incidents across the country.

The order requires federal authorities and agency leaders to provide the White House with recommendations within 60 days on ways for authorities to combat anti-Semitism and “quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.”

Most pro-Palestinian student protesters – many of whom have been progressive Jews – deny that they support Hamas or are being anti-Semitic. They say they are exercising their right to protest against Israel's war on Gaza, and the US government's continued support for it.

Jewish Voice for Peace, a progressive advocacy group at the forefront of Jewish student activism, denounced the order as "a vile attempt to sow fear and crush political dissent to the US-backed Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza".

"We stand with the student protesters who so bravely put their bodies and academic careers on the line to save lives and demand an end to the Israeli military’s destruction of Gaza," Stefanie Fox, JVP's executive director, said in a statement on Wednesday.

"As Jews, we refuse to be pawns in the far-right’s authoritarian takeover. Trump and his cronies do not care about Jewish safety – in fact, they and the White Nationalists who support them are themselves the greatest threat to American Jews."