By Brett Wilkins / Common Dreams

An executive order signed Wednesday by Republican U.S. President Donald Trump authorizing the deportation of noncitizen students and others who took part in protests against Israel’s annihilation of Gaza was condemned by civil rights defenders as an overzealous bid to smear the movement for Palestinian rights under the guise of combating antisemitism.

Before publishing the order—which is titled “Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism“—the White House accused “pro-Hamas aliens and left-wing radicals” of waging “a campaign of intimidation, vandalism, and violence on the campuses and streets of America” and the Biden administration of turning “a blind eye to this coordinated assault on public order.”

Trump’s office said the new directive “takes forceful and unprecedented steps to marshal all Federal resources to combat the explosion of antisemitism on our campuses and in our streets since October 7, 2023.”

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice… we will find you, and we will deport you,” the White House said, adding that the Trump administration “will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

The White House vowed “immediate action” by federal prosecutors in response to “terroristic threats, arson, vandalism, and violence against American Jews”—without providing any examples of these alleged crimes.

While analyses have shown that pro-Palestine student protests have been nearly 100% peaceful, violence by police and pro-Israel counter-demonstrators was reported on numerous campuses.

Trump signed two additional executive orders late Wednesday; one promoting so-called “school choice” policies critics say are meant to destroy public education, and another ending federal funding for public schools accused of “indoctrination… including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned Trump’s antisemitism order as “a dishonest, overbroad, and unenforceable attempt to smear college students who protested against the Israeli government’s genocidal war on Gaza in overwhelmingly peaceful ways.”

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)—which led an unprecedented nationwide wave of Jewish-led protests for Palestinian rights—said Trump’s order “is pulled directly from the pages of the far-Right Heritage Foundation’s ‘Project Esther‘ report, which is a blueprint for using the federal government and private institutions to dismantle the Palestine solidarity movement and broader U.S. civil society, under the guise of ‘fighting antisemitism.’”

“These tactics are built to disrupt the historic movement for Palestinian liberation across the U.S.—including on college campuses—before then using those same tactics to attack a wide range of progressive social justice movements,” JVP added.

JVP executive director Stefanie Fox said in a statement, “We stand with the student protestors who so bravely put their bodies and academic careers on the line to save lives and demand an end to the Israeli military’s destruction of Gaza.”

“As Jews, we refuse to be pawns in the far-right’s authoritarian takeover,” Fox added. “Trump and his cronies do not care about Jewish safety—in fact, they and the white nationalists who support them are themselves the greatest threat to American Jews. They are waging a campaign against all those who are brave enough to challenge their power.”

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Brett Wilkins

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.