Trump signs anti-Semitism order that opens door to pro-Palestinian student deportations

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that opens the door to the deportation of pro-Palestinian student demonstrators in an effort he says is geared toward combatting anti-Semitism.

Trump said that in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, "Jewish students have faced an unrelenting barrage of discrimination; denial of access to campus common areas and facilities, including libraries and classrooms; and intimidation, harassment, and physical threats and assault."

Though Trump did not mention demonstrators or protests directly in his order, he was likely referring to the wave of anti-war demonstrations that erupted on college campuses amid Israel's indiscriminate war on the besieged Gaza Strip, which has killed over 47,000 people and led to the widespread destruction of the coastal enclave, mass displacement and acute shortages of badly-needed goods.

The protests, which took a wide variety of forms to include sit-ins, rallies and hunger strikes, have largely abated as college campuses instituted new rules that ramped up penalties on demonstrators, including on those who protested without official authorization.

Trump said it would now be the policy of the US government to "combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence."

He is specifically directing the secretary of state, the secretary of education and the secretary of homeland security to consult with one another to draft reports that will include recommendations for familiarizing colleges and universities "with the grounds for inadmissibility under 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3) so that such institutions may monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff relevant to those grounds and for ensuring that such reports about aliens lead, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens."

He was referring to a section in US law which specifies that foreign nationals can be denied US entry on security grounds.

All government agencies are also directed to submit a report to Trump within 60 days "identifying all civil and criminal authorities or actions within the jurisdiction of that agency, beyond those already implemented under Executive Order 13899, that might be used to curb or combat anti-Semitism, and containing an inventory and analysis of all pending administrative complaints, as of the date of the report, against or involving institutions of higher education alleging civil-rights violations related to or arising from post-October 7, 2023, campus anti-Semitism."