by Hudson Crozier
President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting foreigners who “support designated foreign terrorists” could be the beginning of a previously promised crackdown on radical pro-Palestinian students on US college campuses.
Monday directive Trump orders the US government to deport foreigners who “have a hostile attitude toward”. [American] citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles and do not advocate, aid or support designated foreign terrorists or other threats to our national security.” That could describe many foreign students siding with Hamas and other terrorist groups at U.S. universities, a Daily Caller News Foundation analyst said.
“If a group of students clearly supports terrorism or engages in crime and its leader is on a visa, then [student] does not deserve to be here and benefit from a country that is attacking,” Ryan Mauro, an investigative researcher at the Capital Research Center, told DCNF. “Similarly, if a protester clearly supports terrorism or ideologically motivated crime and is here on a visa, he or she should also be removed.”
Mauro wrote 122-page report on anti-Israel activism, labeling Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) as “the group by far most responsible” for what he calls the “pro-terrorist” movement on college campuses. The group led demonstrations across the country and took center stage in October 2023 vocation Hamas’s massacre of Israelis is a “historic victory.”
Goodbye students and professors supporting Hamas here on visas 👋
From one of Trump’s modern executive orders: pic.twitter.com/yo26wrdJSg
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) January 21, 2025
Republican Party 2024 platform and Trump’s modern secretary of state have indicated that such messages, if they come from visa holders, could result in deportation.
“If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and it turns out that you are a Hamas supporter, we would not let you in” – Secretary of State Marco Rubio he said senators during Wednesday’s confirmation hearing when asked about protests on campus. “Now that you got your visa and [are] in the US and we realize that you are a supporter, we should revoke your visa.”
Senate confirmed On Monday, Rubio will head the State Department, which has the authority to do so issue and revoke visas. Federal law provides that an alien who has ties to terrorists or “supports” terrorists or “terrorist activities” is worthless be in the USA
Students for Justice in Palestine did not immediately respond to repeated requests from the Daily Caller News Foundation for comment on how Trump’s executive order might affect its activism.
Constitutional law expert Ilya Shapiro told DCNF that Trump’s executive order is both a good step toward combating anti-Semitism on campus and a “strict” law. Shapiro is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and writes frequently about the anti-Israel movement.
Shapiro said the U.S. government has “broad authority… to set rules about who can come to this country, how long they can stay and what they can do while they are here” and is allowed to recognize “cultural values” as part of its standards.
Shapiro noted that the State Department was under former President Joe Biden he admitted could waive visas based on support for Hamas in a November 2023 letter to Rubio, then a U.S. senator from Florida.
“This is not creating new law,” Shapiro said of the executive order. “This directs the relevant authorities to enforce existing law.”
Mauro said the Trump administration may go further to thwart anti-Israel activist groups.
“If we cut off funding by revoking their nonprofit status, as we should under the IRS Code, their hate factories will have to shut down,” the counterterrorism analyst said. Students for Justice in Palestine and other anti-Israel organizations receive funding from the tax-exempt nonprofit Westchester People’s Action Coalition (WESPAC).
“The Trump administration should start by revoking terrorism-related tax-exempt statuses because it is the easiest and most effective measure,” Mauro told DCNF. “Get that out of the way quickly and then focus on the more time-consuming task of building legal cases to revoke visas and initiate deportation proceedings based on the highest evidentiary standards possible.”
“I have lists and evidence binders ready if the Trump administration is serious about dismantling this anti-Semitic and anti-American infrastructure,” Mauro said, adding: “A phone call is all it takes.”
“Culture change takes a long time, but progress can be seen quickly on a college campus[es] somewhere else,” Mauro said.
IN fiction sent to the Biden-Harris administration, Republicans in Congress he insisted officials to act under federal law that allows the deportation of visa holders who express support for terrorism. The House Judiciary Committee also wrote in December report that the administration failed to provide information on “the number of foreign nationals, including those on student visas,” which contributed to support for terrorism “during anti-Israel protests.”
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Hudson Crozier is a reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Pro-Palestinian Protesters” by Paweł Becker. CC BY 2.0
