Zionist Groups Urge Trump White House to Prioritize Deporting Anti-Israel Protesters

As Republicans jockey for roles in the Trump administration and interest groups work to get their agendas in front of incoming officials, some conservative activists are pushing President-elect Donald Trump to make good on a campaign promise to deport foreign students who espoused support for terror groups during campus anti-Israel protests after last year’s Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.

The Republican Party platform released in July was a sparse list that reflected Trump’s ideological priorities but included few concrete policy proposals. Trump’s pledge to tackle antisemitism was coupled with just one policy goal: “support revoking Visas of Foreign Nationals who support terrorism and jihadism.”

Now, some of Trump’s backers argue that should be a day-one priority for the new administration. They are urging the president-elect to take on antisemitism in a way that incorporates counterterrorism measures, such as digging deeper into Iran’s influence on U.S. campus protests and looking into whether radical campus organizations receive illicit foreign financing.

“I think we’d like to see people who are on student visas, who have publicly and specifically endorsed Hamas or Hezbollah or what is a designated terrorist organization by the United States, and they’re showing they are very vocal in their support for them, that those students would lose their student visas to the United States and therefore be removed,” said Luke Moon, executive director of the Philos Project, which works to promote Christian engagement in the Middle East. Vice President-elect J.D. Vance spoke at the Philos Project’s Oct. 7 memorial rally in Washington this year.

Richard Goldberg, a former National Security Council official in Trump’s first term, said that the rhetoric from Trump and Republicans during the campaign suggests that this issue will be top of mind for them.

“The president-elect made it very clear throughout the campaign and even in the Republican platform at the RNC that he is going to have a strong focus on rooting out antisemitism, particularly in higher education, including deporting visa holders who are behind a lot of these antisemitic incidents on campuses,” said Goldberg.

[...] The policy’s proponents say just a handful of those deportations, even if they are challenged in court, would send a warning shot to foreign students.

“You don’t have to deport every foreign student that ever lifted a sign that said ‘Free Palestine.’ But as soon as you start deporting people legitimately under revoking their student status, I think a lot of people will get the message that this is not a free lunch,” said James Carafano, senior counselor to the president at the Heritage Foundation.

Carafano is one of the leaders of Project Esther, a group created by the Heritage Foundation to generate conservative proposals to combat antisemitism. Moon, who is also part of the group, said the project’s leaders are angling for roles working on antisemitism within the Trump White House, particularly if Trump — like outgoing President Joe Biden — creates a task force focused on countering antisemitism.