New York, United States – Last week, United States President Donald Trump published a message directed at the student protesters who participated in last year’s pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
It was a warning. And it was aimed specifically at the immigrants among the protesters.
“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” Trump was quoted as saying in a White House fact sheet.
“I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”
The statement was the latest sign that the fallout from the protests was far from over. If anything, under Trump’s second term, free-speech advocates and Palestinian rights supporters are bracing for a continued crackdown on the university activists who led demonstrations.
“The legal questions about deporting students for speech that would otherwise be protected in the US are complicated,” Sarah McLaughlin, a scholar at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), told media.
“But the ethical question is clear: Do we want deportation to be a consequence for expressing political views disfavoured by the White House?”