President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday directing all federal agencies to look into deporting anti-Semitic resident aliens, including student visa holders, who broke U.S. law.
The order, released Wednesday afternoon and part of the Trump administration's larger push against anti-Semitism, calls for deporting anti-Jewish protesters who committed crimes following Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. It also gives agency leaders 60 days to submit recommendations to the White House and instructs the Justice Department to investigate pro-Hamas intimidation and graffiti on college campuses and beyond.
House Republicans have pushed for stronger federal action on anti-Semitism, with six GOP-led committees issuing a report last month that blasted the Biden administration for not preventing anti-Semitism on campus. The report singled out Columbia University, which received $2.7 billion in federal funding in fiscal year 2023. An encampment at the university last year featured anti-Semitic rhetoric and ignited anti-Israel protests nationwide.
During the encampment, anti-Israel activists staged weeks of protests at Columbia, at one point storming and occupying a campus building and calling for an "intifada" against Jews. The Ivy League university faced further scrutiny when administrators were caught exchanging text messages that scoffed at Jewish students' concerns over the eruption of anti-Semitism, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
As recently as Monday, a Columbia student group observed Holocaust Remembrance Day by comparing Israel's treatment of Palestinians to Auschwitz.
Trump, who pledged on the campaign trail to deport pro-Hamas students on visas, signed an executive order last week that lays the groundwork for such action. The order mandated that the government "ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States" do not "support designated foreign terrorists."
Trump also signed an executive order on Wednesday barring federal funding for K-12 schools that teach critical race theory or "radical gender ideology." Trump's nominee for education secretary, Linda McMahon, has 90 days to present the president with a plan to eliminate critical race theory and what Trump has called "transgender insanity" from K-12 curricula, according to a White House memo.
The order, aimed at cultivating "patriotic citizens ready for the workforce, not political activists," also reinstates the 1776 Commission, which Trump set up in his first term to promote a better understanding of U.S. history and founding principles among the nation's youth.
"Critical race theory, the 1619 Project, and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda—an ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together," Trump said while announcing the commission in 2020.
"The only path to national unity is through our shared identity as Americans," Trump continued. "That is why it is so urgent that we finally restore patriotic education to our schools."