The Trump Administration’s endless war on freedom of speech and press continues. His latest executive order threat is one of his worst: Trump wants to deport pro-Palestine students and take their visas away.
A lot has happened in the first week or so of Trump taking office. According to Rolling Stone, the administration carefully crafted a ‘shock and awe’ plan to overwhelm both congress and the public with a battery of crimes against human rights. Everything from trans genocide bills designed to dehumanize trans people, to eroding protections for migrant people and pro-Palestine activists.
Now, the Trump administration wants to take away student visas from Palestine activists and deport them. As said by Reuters, Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 29, 2025 that, on paper, says it’s “fighting antisemitism,” but what it really does is grossly expand the powers of the Trump administration to stamp down on Palestine activism. This administration deems activism as “terroristic threats, arson, vandalism and violence against American Jews.”
Antisemitism is a complex topic, but currently there’s an insidious campaign to frame anti-zionism efforts as antisemitic, even though this is not hatred of Jewish people, but rather a push for the liberation of Palestinians who had their land stolen from them by Israel. There’s undoubtedly some folks out there looking for opportunities to trojan horse their own hatred of Jewish people, but these are by and large far right types who don’t really care about Palestinian struggle to begin with. For the past couple decades or so, Israel has been hard at work equating “free Palestine” sentiments with terrorism and antisemitism. It takes a bit of knowledge to see right through the propaganda.
In the fact sheet of the executive order, Trump also said “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. I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.” As Twitter user @KarmaIsAFad rightfully declares, “GIVE US A BREAK PLEASE.”
We’ve all known for a good while that free speech (the good, non-fascist kind) has been under attack in America. As we’ve seen with the Columbia protests against Israel, activists get arrested for expressing simple speech. It’s a scary time to be openly political, but that has basically been the case since America’s inception, let’s be real. Now more than ever do migrant students and pro-Palestine activists need our support. This administration wants to fight freedom, so let’s fight it back.
Published: Feb 3, 2025 08:00 am