President Donald Trump has recently signed an executive order that could potentially deport foreign supporters and sympathizers of terrorist groups from the United States, according to Campus Reform Higher Education Fellow Nicholas Giordano.
Trump’s executive order, titled “Protecting the United States from foreign terrorists and other national security and public safety threats,” was issued Monday.
The order clarifies that “It is the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from aliens who intend to commit terrorist attacks, threaten our national security, espouse hateful ideology, or otherwise exploit the immigration laws for malevolent purposes.”
Professor Giordano told Campus Reform that “[t]heoretically, under the EO, the Department of Homeland Security can investigate those [foreign] students who express anti-American sentiment and engage in hostile rhetoric against the United States, and if those students are deemed a threat, they can be removed from the United States.”
He added that Trump’s executive order puts “foreign students on notice that they are no longer entitled to come to the United States, and must adhere to certain standards of conduct while in the country. Their actions and speech, especially those perceived as supporting terrorism or posing a threat to national security, will be scrutinized more closely, and has the potential to lead to their removal.”
The order specifies that the United States “must ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States 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 and other threats to our national security.”
It also specifies that the Secretary of State must advise the White House on “protect[ing] the American people from the actions of foreign nationals” who, among other things, “preach or call for sectarian violence” or “provide aid, advocacy, or support for foreign terrorists.”
The 2024 anti-Israel campus protests frequently saw activists praising terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which have murdered hundreds of innocents.
The protesters have eulogized terrorist leaders, justified the Oct. 7 massacre, and repeatedly called for an “Intifada,” or a violent uprising against Israelis.
Some of the anti-Israel student protesters at Columbia University encouraged others to support Samidoun, an entity that was sanctioned by the American and Canadian governments for its ties to the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Trump has previously promised to “deport the foreign jihad sympathizers” and “Hamas supporters,” and Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently promoted the policy of taking away visas from Hamas sympathizers.
This article was originally published at campusreform.org
