Trump orders deportation of pro-Palestine students and faculty

United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order, rife with Islamophobic phrases, which conflates being pro-Palestinian with terrorism, targeting the visa eligibility of foreign students and faculty who have participated in pro-Gaza protests.

The executive order does not directly cancel visas, but it pushes schools to monitor and report any protest activity by foreign students and staff in order to possibly investigate and deport them.

• Trump deport pro-Palestinian foreign students and staff
  

  Trump orders to investigate, deport pro-Palestinian foreign students and staff

  Trump has signed an executive order, pledging to deport foreign students who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests.

At this previously planned demonstration against NATO and for Palestine, many were only just learning about the latest controversial, seemingly unconstitutional, and clearly human rights denying, executive order from Trump.

The first step for any academic institution is to protect freedom of speech and to report on students, to inform and collaborate with federal agencies is a way to destroy that entirely, and that’s what they want.

They want to repress pro-Palestinian viewpoints.

They want to repress and remove Muslim and Arab communities from this campus, so for faculty to do that would destroy the integrity of this as an academic institution, as well as just be morally awful. I really hope that that’s not the case, but we have seen the way that faculty have attacked students in the past.

We’ve seen at Columbia how faculty have [sic] participated in doxing students.

Student Protestor 01

• US Hawks trying to demonize students protesting Israeli genocide
  

  How hawks in US are trying to demonize students protesting Israeli genocide

  The US government has resorted to brutal measures not only to suppress the growing student movement but also to demonize it labeling protesters as “criminals” and “terrorists.”

The anti-genocide protest movement after October 7, 2023, has grown into the nation’s second-largest protest movement in 50 years.

It has been attended by countless anti-Zionist Jews and protesters are still regularly marching for Palestinian safety and freedom.

Deportation is a long, clearly defined, bureaucratic process and the impact of Trump’s latest executive order appears to come down to how many university faculty and civil servants will become collaborators.

• Columbia affiliate college fully divests from Israel
  

  US campus protests: Columbia affiliate college fully divests from Israel

  Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine describes the move as the beginning of the domino effect.

We have a lot of very good standing relationships with many of our faculty members.

We have our own organized faculty and staff Students for Justice in Palestine, who have continued to express solidarity with students.

So, we’re hopeful that so many of the faculty members in our community who stood with students during the encampments, during all the protests over the last year, will continue to stand with students today.

Student Protestor 02

This executive order is the latest shockingly pro-Israeli move by Washington which effectively tries to make visas contingent on pleasing the Trump administration’s political views and would deny legal immigrants the national rights to free speech and free assembly, and it ignores previous court decisions that have upheld these rights.

• US ‘violent crackdown’ on pro-Palestine student protests
  

  Iran rights official slams US ‘violent crackdown’ on pro-Palestine student protests

  Iran’s top human rights official says the United States’ violent suppression of pro-Palestinian protests encourages Israel to continue war crimes in Gaza.