President Trump is expected to sign an executive order Wednesday instructing all federal agencies to identify civil and criminal authorities available to combat antisemitism — including finding ways to deport anti-Jewish activists who violated laws, The Post has learned.
The order requires agency and department leaders to provide the White House with recommendations within 60 days and outlines plans for the Justice Department to investigate pro-Hamas graffiti and intimidation, including on college campuses, according to a document describing the order.
The executive order calls for the deportation of resident aliens — including students with visas — who broke laws as part of anti-Israel protests following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks that sparked the invasion of Gaza, the document reviewed by The Post says.
Six Republican-led House committees issued a report last month calling for the federal government to do more to address antisemitism, including by conditioning federal aid to colleges to force stricter policies against anti-Jewish bias.
That report focused heavily on Columbia University, the site of a large encampment that featured many documented instances of anti-Jewish remarks against both pro-Israel activists and Jewish students, and noted that allegedly permissive colleges took in $2.7 billion in federal funds in fiscal year 2023.
The State Department and Department of Homeland Security under President Joe Biden stonewalled records requests about the number of visa holders among those protesters, the House GOP report said.
Trump, as a candidate, called for deporting pro-Hamas students who are in the US on visas and last week signed a different executive order that seemed to hint at steps toward that goal.
That order contained a passage that called for the US to “ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States” do not “support designated foreign terrorists,” though the intended effect of the wording was not immediately clear.
College presidents summoned to Congress in December 2023 infamously refused to say if calling for the genocide of Jews constituted punishable conduct under grilling by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Trump’s nominee to serve as UN ambassador. They argued that free-speech protections were at play.
Hate speech generally is legal in the US, but the House GOP report released last month argues that federal law bars recipients of taxpayer funds from tolerating discrimination — allowing a way to force recipients to stiffen policies.
Federal courts also have found that non-citizens have fewer free speech rights.
The Supreme Court ruled in the landmark 1972 case Kleindienst v. Mandel that the government could refuse a visa to a Belgian Marxist — after prior court cases affirmed the deportation of anarchist and Communist non-citizens.
Some of the best-known instances of activism in support of Hamas, which massacred about 1,200 Jewish residents of southern Israel, occurred in Washington, DC, when multiple protesters carried banners supporting the group as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress in July.
Zaid Mohammed Mahdawi, the 26-year-old president of the Richmond, Va., chapter of American Muslims for Palestine, was arrested for allegedly climbing atop a monument near the Capitol and spray-painting “HAMAS IS COMIN.”
Trump’s attempt to crack down on antisemitism — including likely by withholding federal funds — comes on the heels of his orders to temporarily freeze federal aid and the distribution of pending federal grants, the latter of which was paused Tuesday by a federal judge.
In his first term, Trump also used the threat of yanking federal funds in response to nationwide anti-police rioting following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd.
Trump ordered steps to defund New York City, Portland and Seattle for allegedly doing too little to quell the unrest. He left office before that threat was fulfilled, though the Justice Department certified the cities for the chopping block.
