Trump’s Antisemitism Order Puts Foreign Students—and US Colleges—on Notice

After 15 months of terrorist-supporting thugs engaging in acts of violence and intimidation against Jews with impunity, America finally has a president who takes combatting antisemitism seriously.

On Jan. 29, President Trump signed an executive order making it “the policy of the United States to combat antisemitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.”

The order builds on a prior executive order the president signed in December 2019, during his first term, to ensure American Jews would be fully protected under our civil rights laws, like all other religious and ethnic groups.

Though the Biden Administration did not formally revoke Trump’s executive order, they essentially ignored it—as was evident to anyone who saw the outrageous conduct of some students at so many college campuses after the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel.

Just this week, anti-Israel radicals at Columbia University vandalized university buildings with red paint and dumped cement in the toilets, and a mob of antisemitic protesters affiliated with Students for Justice in Palestine at Ohio State University disrupted an International Holocaust Remembrance Day event at the campus Chabad House. Many of the leaders of the radical student groups behind these acts are here on student visas.

As the new Trump order puts it, “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.”

The order requires federal agencies to report to the president within 60 days on “all civil and criminal authorities or actions within their jurisdiction … against or involving institutions of higher education alleging civil-rights violations related to or arising from post-October 7, 2023, campus antisemitism.”

Further, the order requires the secretaries of state, education, and homeland security to make “recommendations for familiarizing” colleges and universities with reasons foreign students can be denied visas under U.S. law.

Trump’s order puts foreign students on notice: they are guests in our country, and that comes with obligations. That includes refraining from acts of vandalism, harassment, and destruction of property.

It also includes the obligation to refrain from supporting terrorist organizations.

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) states: “Any alien – who endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization … is inadmissible.”

If it is apparent that a visa applicant is a supporter of terrorism at the time of interview in an embassy overseas, the adjudicating consular officer would refuse the applicant. But sometimes that ineligibility is discovered when the student has already been admitted to the United States and started their studies. 

Trump’s order requires the departments of State, Education, and Homeland Security to ensure that institutions of higher education are informed so that they “may monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff relevant to those grounds” of visa refusal. The order further tasks the agencies with ensuring that “reports about aliens lead, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens.”

That’s a reference to another section of the INA, which defines “deportable aliens” to include the same behavior – endorsing or espousing terrorism – that would stop them getting a visa to begin with.

That means if Immigration and Customs Enforcement gets evidence of such behavior after a student arrives and is in school, they can arrest the student and begin removal proceedings.

President Trump made his intentions clear in a fact sheet distributed along with his executive order: “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

While official sources have not confirmed visa cancelations yet, one media site reported that a Chinese student who was arrested in California last year for leading “pro-Palestinian” rallies just had her visa revoked. This would make her “out of status” and require her to leave the United States.

Supporters of terrorism are inadmissible to this country. If a foreign national on a visa shows support for terrorism after they’ve been let in, they should be deported. Thanks to President Trump’s common-sense approach to national security, the existing but under-used law stating that can now be enforced.

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