Trump Intensifies Threats Against Pro-Palestine Students
Cops in riot gear encircling the Dartmouth encampment in New Hampshire.
Photo: PSL
“All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” US President Trump wrote on March 4 on Truth Social, the social media platform he has majority ownership of. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on [sic] the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Representative Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick to serve as US Ambassador to the United Nations and who has spearheaded attacks against the pro-Palestine student movement, shared Trump’s announcement to Twitter, adding that under Trump’s leadership, “colleges and universities will be held accountable.”
“Antisemitism and anti-Israel hate will not be tolerated on American campuses. Promises made, promises kept,” Stefanik continued.
These threats come one year after students in the United States sparked an international student movement in solidarity with Palestine, and faced brutal repression from both police forces, Zionist vigilantes, and right-wing billionaires.
“We are going to put these people in jail—not for 24 hours, but for years”
This announcement comes a week after Trump’s multi-agency Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announced it would visit 10 college campuses in which the student movement for Palestine is active. The institutions are: Columbia University, George Washington University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, New York University, Northwestern University, the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Minnesota and the University of Southern California.
This task force was formed as a result of Trump’s January 29 executive order on “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism”. The order directed several officials, specifically the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Education, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, to guide higher education institutions to “report activities by alien students and staff” that Trump’s administration could consider as anti-semitic or supportive of terrorism. Such reports could “lead, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens.”
“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,” said Trump in a statement following the executive order. “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 threats against the student movement are severe. Leo Terrell, who leads the task force, told Israel’s Channel 12 News that he was considering jailing students for years for protest activity.
“You see all these disorderly demonstrations, supporting Hamas and trying to intimidate Jews? We are going to put these people in jail—not for 24 hours, but for years,” said Terrell, who serves as the Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division in the United States Department of Justice.
Trump’s US Department of Justice (DOJ)’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi recently released memorandums on various policies. Among them includes the establishment of a “Joint Task Force October 7 (JFT-7)”, tasked with “seeking justice for victims of the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack in Israel, addressing the ongoing threat posed by Hamas and its affiliates, and combatting antisemitic acts of terrorism and civil rights violations in the homeland.”
Among JFT-7’s priorities are “Investigating and prosecuting acts of terrorism, antisemitic civil rights violations, and other federal crimes committed by Hamas supporters in the United States, including on college campuses,” and “Investigating and prosecuting those responsible for funding Hamas.”
The memo outlines that the Office of the Deputy Attorney General of the DOJ is tasked with spearheading “engagement with Israeli counterparts.”
With elaborate plans made to crack down on protesters, Trump’s bid to present himself as a defender of free speech seems contradictory. During his address to Congress on Tuesday, March 4, he claimed that his administration had “stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America.”
Columbia once again launches severe repression against student movement
Columbia University, where students inaugurated the first Gaza solidarity encampment last year, faced mass arrest, and sparked an international student movement in solidarity with Palestine, is now first on the list of Trump’s targets.
The university stands to lose over USD 50 million in federal funding as Trump continues his crackdown on the student movement. A federal review of Columbia’s contracts and grants with the government was announced Monday night, which identified USD 51.4 million in contracts that could be subject to stop-work orders.
The university’s repression of the continued movement in solidarity with Palestine on campus indicates that it might be responding in fear to Trump’s escalations. Students at Barnard College, the women’s college that is part of Columbia University, staged a sit-in protest at the college’s Milstein Library on Wednesday, renaming it the Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya Liberated Zone, after the Palestinian doctor who served as the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza and is still being held captive by Israeli forces.
Nearly four hours after the sit-in began on March 5, New York Police Department officers entered Barnard’s campus and arrested nine of the student protesters. University administrators claimed there was an active bomb threat in the building, a claim which the students disputed.
this is what @preslrosenbury and @BarnardCollege have decided will be normal. https://t.co/mxQY8jWrLC
— Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (@ColumbiaSJP) March 5, 2025
“We stand firm against mounting repression as the Trump administration’s Department of Justice carries out a witch-hunt against the movement for Palestine, targeting students and activists across the country, many of whom are fighting expulsion and other retribution from their universities while facing arrests for protesting on their campuses,” wrote the Palestinian Youth Movement in a statement. “University administrators are openly complying with the Trump administration’s repressive policies in a desperate effort to protect their funding and appease their donors, putting targets on the backs of their own students and encouraging the broader suppression of our rights.”
Last year, the student movement for Palestine was met with heavy repression, after Columbia’s then-President Minouche Shafik authorized the NYPD to conduct multiple mass arrests against peaceful student protesters. Some students reported sustaining injuries as a result of the NYPD’s arrests following the police raid against students peacefully occupying Hamilton Hall, which they renamed Hind’s Hall after Palestinian child Hind Rajab, killed by Israeli Occupation Forces.
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