Explainer: Breaking down Trump’s executive order targeting Palestine activists
Last month Donald Trump signed an Executive Order aimed at canceling the visas of foreign students who advocate for Palestine. Mondoweiss talked to legal experts about its possible impact and the wider attacks on Palestine advocacy in the U.S.
On January 29 President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at canceling the visas of foreign students who participated in protests opposing the Gaza genocide across college campuses last year.
“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” saidTrump in a fact sheet released alongside the 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.”
Danger to free speech
The order reaffirms Executive Order 13899, which was issued during the first Trump administration in 2019.
That order directed agencies tasked with enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, like the Department of Education, to consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, a controversial document that equates certain criticisms of Israel with antisemitism.
The new order takes additional measures in response to an “unrelenting barrage of discrimination” allegedly faced by Jewish students after the October 7 Hamas attack.
The order calls for schools to become familiar with the grounds for inadmissibility under 8 U.S.C 1182, which applies to immigration.
“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,” it reads.
“Selectively enforcing immigration laws to punish political speech violates the First Amendment. The president should not be in the business of policing speech on college campuses,” said Ben Wizner, Director of the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project at the ACLU in a statement to Mondoweiss. “The administration has many tools at its disposal to combat rising antisemitism that don’t involve targeting people who participate in this country’s political debates.”
“The implications of this executive order go far beyond the Palestine movement. It encourages government agencies to find ways to target any dissent from Trump’s agenda.”
Palestine Legal Director Dima Khalidi
“The universities have a responsibility to ensure all students can thrive in environments free of harassment and intimidation, but Trump’s order and accompanying fact sheet are intended to silence viewpoints the president disagrees with and will have a serious chilling effect across the country,” he continued.
“The implications of this executive order go far beyond the Palestine movement,” said Palestine Legal Director Dima Khalidi in a statement. “It encourages government agencies to find ways to target any dissent from Trump’s agenda, and aims to enlist universities themselves as its censors and snitches. It is imperative that universities protect the rights of their students, refuse to cooperate with Trump’s efforts to silence and criminalize dissent, and end the McCarthyite crackdowns of students speaking out for Palestinian rights.”
Trump’s executive order encourages the attorney general to use the federal “conspiracy against rights” law to counter antisemitism. The law was signed by President Ulysses Grant in 1871 to crack down Ku Klux Klan (KKK) violence in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Ironically, the law was wielded against Trump in response to his support for the January 6 insurrection.
Potential impact
It remains to be seen how the order will be implemented and what kind of legal roadblocks it might encounter, but analysts say it could have a dramatic impact on student activism.
“If college administrations accept the arrangement proposed by Trump in section 3(e) of the ‘Anti-Semitism’ EO, it will transform the American university system into a surveillance and enforcement wing of the Department of Homeland Security.”
Attorney Eric Lee
“If college administrations accept the arrangement proposed by Trump in section 3(e) of the ‘Anti-Semitism’ EO, it will transform the American university system into a surveillance and enforcement wing of the Department of Homeland Security,” immigration attorney Eric Lee told Mondoweiss. “This order would require universities ‘monitor and report’ what students and staff say and write, and also on its face appears to apply to undocumented people, valid visa holders and green card holders.”
“This is already chilling what students say and what staff teach in class, what students write in homework assignments, what comments teachers leave in the margins as they grade, what students and faculty say in student government and department meetings, and whether they attend protests or public meetings,” he continued. “This is a flagrant violation of the First Amendment, which applies to ‘the people,’ not citizens alone. University administrations must publicly and forcefully rejected participation in this anti-democratic scheme.”
On Twitter, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Executive Director Abed Ayoub encouraged international students in the U.S. on an F1 visa to avoid travel this semester.
“Stay in the country during spring break, and other extended breaks,” Ayoub tweeted. “Hearing more and more from students who left for a short trip abroad and are unable to return after their visas got canceled. It’s just not worth the risk. I am confident that there will be more clarity as schools break for the summer.”
Lee points out that Trump’s draconian orders can only be stopped via grassroots opposition.
“The fate of democratic rights will ultimately be decided not by the legal system, where Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito and Trump’s three nominees have the final say, nor by the Democratic Party, which has essentially acquiesced to Trump and is collaborating with elements of the attack on immigrants, including by providing votes for Rubio, Noem and the Laken Riley Act,” he explained. “What will determine the outcome of this struggle is the response of the population. Everyone must develop democratic committees and networks to protect the right to free speech and association by exercising their First Amendment rights actively and vigorously on campus and beyond.”
Surrounding moves
The order is clearly a component of a wider crackdown on Palestine advocacy in the United States.
For years pro-Israel groups and lawmakers have been pushing for the U.S. government to treat anti-Israel sentiment as a civil rights issue in order to legally suppress such sentiments, and there are many signs their efforts are working.
Just days before it was issued, Harvard University announced that it was adopting the IHRA working definition on campus. The move came in response to two lawsuits launched against the school over alleged antisemitism.
In Congress, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) recently reintroduced legislation to provide for the consideration of the IHRA working definition for the enforcement of federal anti-discrimination laws. The bill already has 58 cosponsors: 44 Republicans and 14 Democrats.
Lawler, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and 55 other House members are also reintroducing the Antisemitism Awareness Act. The bill codifies an executive order from the first Trump administration that classified antisemitism as a form discrimination in schools. The effort is a clear attempt to stifle criticism of Israel, as it relies on the IHRA working definition.
The bill is expected to be reintroduced in the Senate soon as well. “In the continued aftermath of the October 7th attacks on Israel by Hamas and Iran, we have seen college campuses across our nation become hotbeds of antisemitism where Jewish students’ rights are being threatened,” Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) told Jewish Insider in a statement. “It’s critical the Department of Education has the tools and resources it needs to investigate antisemitism and root out this vile hatred wherever it rears its ugly head. There can be no equivocating when it comes to the issue of anti-Jewish violence and harassment.”
In accordance with Trump’s executive order, the Justice Department announced that it was establishing a Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism.
“Anti-Semitism in any environment is repugnant to this Nation’s ideals,” said Trump official Leo Terrell, who was tapped to lead the task force. “The Department takes seriously our responsibility to eradicate this hatred wherever it is found. The Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism is the first step in giving life to President Trump’s renewed commitment to ending anti-Semitism in our schools.”
The EO also comes alongside a flurry of anti-immigrant actions from the Trump administration, including a revamped version of its infamous “Muslim Ban.”
Once again, the effort goes further than it did during the first Trump term. It adds language to the 2017 measure that enables the government to deny visas based on political opinions, beliefs, and cultural backgrounds.
“They learned from their ‘mistakes’ the last time around,” University of Colorado professor and legal scholar Maryam Jamshidi told Mother Jones. “We know—based on statements that have been made by Trump and others—that new provisions will be used to target pro-Palestine protesters.”
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