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. 

That position has become a routine talking point in the Republican Party, including among some of Trump’s nominees to high-level administration posts. It leans heavily on one of the key tenets of the modern Republican Party — restricting immigration — even while most students disciplined for unlawful conduct in campus protests are American citizens. 

Just a week after the Oct. 7 attacks, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), now Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, wrote a letter to Secretary of State Tony Blinken asking him to “revoke visas for Hamas sympathizers.” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, said in May that foreign students at U.S. universities who are participating in pro-Hamas protests “should be deported.” 

Trump has not weighed in on the issue since his election. But he said in Oct. 2023 that as president, he would “revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities and we will send them straight back home.” A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to requests for comment. 

Trump’s nominees to top law enforcement posts have not offered much detail about how they will address antisemitism, but Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general whom Trump nominated to serve as his attorney general, has also expressed support for deporting foreign students who support Hamas. “Frankly they need to be taken out of our country or the FBI needs to be interviewing them right away,” she said in Oct. 2023.

Kash Patel, Trump’s pick for FBI chief, will have a major role to play in addressing antisemitism, even though it is not a topic with which he has much experience. A Trump loyalist, Patel has spoken about seeking to rid the FBI of Trump’s enemies. He also served as senior director of counterterrorism at the National Security Council in Trump’s first term, experience that could prime him to focus on terror-related forms of antisemitism if he chooses to focus on the issue.

“At a time when Hamas-connected and other foreign networks are fomenting a dangerous rise in antisemitism, [Patel] would be an outstanding complement to Pam Bondi as attorney general in busting networks tied to terrorist organizations or their state sponsors,” said Goldberg.

The suggested policy rests on a section of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act that allows the U.S. to deny admission to any visa applicant who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity.” What, exactly, counts as endorsing terrorist activity is not stated explicitly.   

Whether deporting students for expressing verbal support for terrorist groups would violate free-speech rights remains an open question, and some First Amendment advocates have made clear that they would object to such a policy and challenge any deportations. 

Some liberal Jewish leaders have raised concerns about the policy. “It’s possible to directly confront and address antisemitism without abandoning the fundamental democratic values that have allowed Jews, and so many others, to thrive here,” Jewish Council for Public Affairs CEO Amy Spitalnick told JI, noting that everyone has “basic due process rights.”

The Nexus Leadership Project, an organization promoting a more progressive definition of antisemitism, also took issue with deporting foreign students. “While the rapid rise in campus antisemitism demands serious action by the incoming administration and Congress, threatening to deport students based on their political views about Israel and Palestine would be a dangerous overreach that undermines both academic freedom and America’s democratic values,” said Kevin Rachlin, Nexus’ Washington director. 

Spokespeople for the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish Federations of North America declined to comment when asked if they would support efforts to deport pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah students.

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. 

According to a report released by Project Esther in October, its members view countering so-called “Hamas-support networks” in the U.S. as the key to dismantling American antisemitism. The report reflects a worldview in which antisemitism is the exclusive domain of far-left activists and the global Islamist movement, and failed to address antisemitism that is not directly related to Israel, such as the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, which was committed by white nationalist.