What’s New
The Trump administration on Wednesday issued guidance suggesting that international students and scholars who participated in protests against the Israel-Hamas war could lose their visas and face deportation.
The White House fact sheet interprets a new executive order that President Trump says is aimed at “vigorously” combating antisemitism.
The Details
Trump’s move, which built on antisemitism directives from his first term, was not a surprise. Trump talked on the campaign trail about going after colleges that he believed were failing to hold pro-Palestinian protesters accountable for antisemitic behavior, and said that he’d try to deport international students who had protested.
The White House fact sheet released Wednesday includes a quote from Trump directed at protesters: “Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you.”
The new executive order asserts that the onset of the war in Gaza “unleashed an unprecedented wave of vile antisemitic discrimination, vandalism, and violence” against Jewish people.
On college campuses, some Jewish students were blocked from classrooms and faced harassment, the order added. (Last year, a judge found that students at the University of California at Los Angeles had been prevented from attending class by activists at a pro-Palestinian encampment. Recent federal investigations have substantiated that both Jewish and Muslim students have faced harassment.)
The order directs the secretaries of education, state, and homeland security to consult on “recommendations for familiarizing institutions of higher education” with the criteria for revoking visas.
Those recommendations, the order states, can help colleges “monitor for and report activities” by international students and employees. Federal officials can then “ensure that such reports” potentially lead to “actions to remove” them, “as appropriate and consistent with applicable law.”
Trump issued a different executive order last week directing federal officials to ensure that visa holders “do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles” and “do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists.”
Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza, is designated by the federal government as a terrorist organization. Trump and some Republican lawmakers have frequently tried to tie campus protesters to Hamas.
The Backdrop
International students and scholars face risks when participating in campus protests. Visa holders who have been arrested can face deportation — but typically only if they’ve been convicted of a crime.
Some international students have been arrested during campus protests over the past 16 months. Around 3,000 people were detained nationwide in connection with encampments last spring calling for colleges to divest from Israel, according to The New York Times.
The vast majority of students (international or not) detained by law enforcement during the recent spate of protests — most of whom were accused of trespassing, a misdemeanor — have had criminal charges dropped. Many have continued to face campus disciplinary proceedings and consequences; a small number of students have been expelled or suspended.
One British Ph.D. student at Cornell University drew attention last fall after being arrested at a pro-Palestinian protest that shut down a campus job fair. The student, Momodou Taal, said at the time that he was facing possible deportation because Cornell was threatening to disenroll him and revoke his visa. Ultimately Cornell allowed Taal to remain enrolled.
If an international student is suspended for a long period of time, that could lead to visa revocation because that student is no longer maintaining a full course load.
Colleges are already required to enter all student visas into a government database and update the entries if there are changes to the visa’s status, under a post-9/11 federal policy.
What to Watch For
Some legal experts said Wednesday that the Trump administration can’t deport international students and scholars for protesting, as the White House fact sheet suggested.
“Deporting non-citizens on the basis of their political speech would be unconstitutional,” said Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney and legislative advisor at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, in a statement.
