Trump signs executive order to cancel student visas of ‘Hamas sympathizers’ who protested Israel’s war in Gaza
Trump signs executive order to cancel student visas of ‘Hamas sympathizers’ who protested Israel’s war in Gaza
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Trump accuses Biden administration of ‘failure to fight anti-Semitism’ on campus. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order promising “immediate action” from federal law enforcement against noncitizen college students and others in the United States who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations during Israel’s war in Gaza.
![[Trump order adds to tense atmosphere on campus around Israel protests, which were met with heavy police response throughout 2023 and 2024]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/05/19/14/Campus_Protests_The_Reckoning_97370.jpg)
The president has pledged to “deport” all “resident aliens” who joined protests, Trump said in a White House fact sheet. “Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” he vowed. Trump also pledged to “quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before,” he claimed.
The Department of Justice will “aggressively” prosecute what it characterizes as “terroristic threats, arson, vandalism and violence against American Jews” after “the explosion of antisemitism” on college campuses in the wake of Israel’s campaign, according to the White House.
“It shall be the policy of the United States 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,” the executive order states.
As The Independent has reported, both antisemitism and Islamophobic threats and violence surged after Hamas invaded Israel in 2023, kicking off the war in Gaza and widespread protests on U.S. campuses. Under the order, government agencies have 60 days to produce a report “identifying all civil and criminal authorities or actions” to “curb or combat” antisemitism, with an inventory of complaints “against or involving” antisemitism in colleges and universities.
