Trump to ‘marshal all federal resources’ to fight antisemitism with new executive order
The EO encourages the deportation of foreign students who broke the law during campus anti-Israel protests

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President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday focused on countering antisemitism, in what the White House described as an effort to “marshal all federal resources” to “combat the explosion of antisemitism on our campuses and in our streets since Oct. 7, 2023.”
The executive order requires every federal department and agency to review criminal and civil authorities that could be used to fight antisemitism, with a requirement to report back to the White House within 60 days, according to a fact sheet provided by a White House official.
The order states that it is the policy of the United States to “combat antisemitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.”
The Justice Department is required to take “immediate action” to “protect law and order, quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities,” the White House fact sheet said, without detailing specific actions the Justice Department will take.
“I will issue clear orders to my attorney general to aggressively prosecute terroristic threats, arson, vandalism and violence against American Jews,” Trump said in the fact sheet. “I will be the best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House.”
The order encourages the attorney general “to employ appropriate civil-rights enforcement authorities,” and calls on the AG to take inventory of all court cases involving antisemitism-related civil rights violations. It specifically invokes a Reconstruction-era federal statute called “conspiracy against rights” that makes it illegal for two or more people to impinge on the civil rights of another American.
The White House fact sheet said the executive order also calls for the deportation of foreign nationals living in the U.S. and foreign students who broke the law in the course of anti-Israel protests on American campuses, a policy that conservative activists pushed Trump to adopt during his campaign.
“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 said in the 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 actual executive order took a more limited approach. It called on the Secretaries of State, Education and Homeland Security to familiarize higher education institutions with federal immigration regulations so that foreign students and staff can be investigated and deported “if warranted.”
The actions reflect an understanding of antisemitism focused on threats emanating from the political left. That worldview was outlined extensively in a policy document called Project Esther that the Heritage Foundation unveiled in October, which offered a conservative vision for combating antisemitism. The Project Esther report described the largest source of antisemitism in America as pro-Hamas protests on liberal campuses, sentiments reflected in Trump’s newest order.
The White House described the executive order as an effort to build on Trump’s 2019 executive order combating antisemitism, which said that federal agencies must utilize the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism when investigating Title VI civil rights violations.