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Activist deportations in the second Trump presidency
Policy targeting pro-Palestinian protesters residing in the US From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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During the second presidency of Donald Trump, the United States has pursued a policy of targeting political dissidents, particularly pro-Palestinian international students and academics, for deportation.[1][2][3][4] As of April 17, 2025, over 1,000 international students and graduates had had their visas revoked or their status terminated,[5] and by May 15, 2025 almost 2,000 student visas had been canceled, though many had been restored by courts.[6] Many of the visas were revoked based on minor violations such as speeding tickets, and only a handful may have been related to political targeting.[6] Unsealed court depositions have revealed extensive use of the website Canary Mission by the Trump administration to identify pro-Palestinian activists for deportation and the heavy involvement of Trump aide Stephen Miller.[7]
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Background
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The United States has long used its immigration policy as a tool for political control, particularly during the First and Second Red Scare. During the Palmer Raids, hundreds of left-wing immigrants were deported due to their political activities. Deportation was used to circumvent their constitutional rights when they could not be charged with a crime in the domestic legal system. Fear of immigrant radicalism led to the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which expanded the powers of the government to investigate and deport immigrants for their political beliefs.[8]
In August 2015, during his 2016 campaign, Trump proposed the mass deportation of illegal immigrants as a part of his immigration policy.[9] He proposed a "Deportation Force" to carry out this plan, modeled after the 1950s-era "Operation Wetback" program during the Dwight Eisenhower administration that ended following a congressional investigation.[10] He returned to this idea during his 2024 presidential campaign, and blurred the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants, and has promised to deport both.[11] To achieve the goal of deporting millions per year, Trump stated his intent to expand deportations without due process, which would be accomplished by the expedited removal authorities of 8 U.S. Code § 1225; invoking the Alien Enemies Act within the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798; and invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to allow the military to apprehend migrants and thus bypass the Posse Comitatus Act.[12]
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids would be expanded to include workplace raids and sweeps in public places. Following arrest, Stephen Miller has stated that illegal immigrants would be taken to "large-scale staging grounds near the border, most likely in Texas", to be held in internment camps prior to deportation. Trump told a rally audience in September 2024 that the deportation effort "will be a bloody story."[13][14]
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Use of social media to identify potential deportees
The administration is reportedly using an artificial intelligence "catch and revoke" program to scrape social media posts and identify students who allegedly support Hamas.[15] A number of detained and deported activists have been targeted by doxing campaigns prior to their arrest.[16][17][18]
On March 25, 2025, the state department issued a directive stating that visa applicants would be ineligible if their social media activity indicated that they were "advocating for, sympathizing with, or persuading others to endorse or espouse terrorist activities or support a designated foreign terrorist organization", and that similar activity could result in the revocation of existing visas.[19] On April 9, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it will screen social media accounts for what it deems to be "antisemitic".[20][21]
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Targeting of higher education
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The administration has focused its catch and revoke program on foreign students who have engaged in pro-Palestinian speech, characterizing them as pro-Hamas. The government plans to use its Student and Exchange Visitor Program to review institutions of higher education that have had significant pro-Palestinian protests, suggesting that it may decertify those institutions, making them ineligible to enroll student visa holders. Revocation of student visas also threatens a revenue stream for colleges and universities, with one senior Department of Justice official saying "That's one of their biggest cash cows, foreign students."[22]
On April 8, 2025, in response to the large number of student visa revocations, Inside Higher Ed started tracking the number of known visa revocations for students and recent alumni, and mapping the colleges and universities reporting visa revocations. As of the morning of April 9, the tracker showed 419 students and recent alumni from over 80 institutions of higher education across the U.S. In many cases, immigration authorities have not notified the institutions of the reasons for the visa revocations.[23]
The American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association filed suit against the Trump administration, arguing that it is promoting an "ideological-deportation policy" that harms not only those the administration is attempting to deport, but also university communities more generally, and that pursuing students and faculty on the basis of their views is unconstitutional.[24] The plaintiffs, represented by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, filed their suit in the District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and asserted that the policy violated the First and Fifth Amendments. The Trump administration moved that the case be dismissed for lack of standing, and also claimed that there was no ideological-deportation policy and that the district court didn't have jurisdiction over immigration enforcement. The case was assigned to Judge William Young, and on April 30, 2025, Young dismissed the Fifth Amendment challenge, but ruled that the First Amendment challenge could proceed, saying "It is well established that noncitizens have at least some First Amendment rights, and political speech is ‘at the core of what the First Amendment is designed to protect.’"[25]
On May 28, 2025, secretary of state Marco Rubio announced that the US would "aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students" and "revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong." China's ministry of foreign affairs formally objected to Rubio's announcement.[26]
On July 9, 2025, unsealed deposition transcripts by U.S. District Judge William G. Young for a case to decide whether the activist deportations violated First Amendment rights to speech and political views revealed that the Trump administration heavily used the website Canary Mission to identify pro-Palestinian activists for deportation, and that Trump aide Stephen Miller was deeply involved in the effort.[7]
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Cases
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Rasha Alawieh
Rasha Alawieh was born in 1990. She is a Lebanese transplant nephrologist who had worked as an assistant professor at Brown University. [27] She is a Shia Muslim.[28]
Alawieh obtained her medical degree from the American University of Beirut in 2015. She completed her residency at the American University of Beirut Medical Center in 2018.[29] That year, she obtained a J-1 visa[29] to enter the United States and completed fellowships at Ohio State University and the University of Washington.[30] She completed the Yale Waterbury Internal Medicine Program in June 2024, the same month the United States' government approved Alawieh's petition for an H-1B visa, sponsored by Brown Medicine.[31] This visa was issued at the Lebanese consulate on March 11, 2025 and was valid through mid-2027.[31]
Alawieh visited Lebanon in February 2025 to see relatives.[32] While in Lebanon, she attended the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of Hezbollah.[33] Hezbollah has been deemed a designated terrorist organization by the United States Department of State.[34] In her airport re-entry interview, she said she attended the funeral because of Nasrallah's religious position in the Shia community.[35] She said her family in Lebanon was not in Hezbollah, but supported it.[36] Alawieh admitted during questioning that she had sent some images of Hezbollah members.[37]
Yunseo Chung
Chung is a Columbia University student who came to the United States from South Korea at age 7 and is a lawful permanent resident with a green card. On March 5, she was among a group of protesters arrested during a sit-in at Barnard College to express solidarity with students protesting the Gaza war who had been expelled. Charges against Chung were dropped. The government characterized the protest as "pro-Hamas," an argument which Chung's lawyer rejected, saying "The idea that a valedictorian just shows some humanity to fellow people is somehow a threat to U.S. foreign policy, and it really makes you wonder what's going on with our foreign policy."[38]
On March 10, federal law enforcement told her lawyer that her permanent resident status was being revoked. Agents searched for Chung at her dorm and her parents' home, though she was not there. Chung's lawyer filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the District Court for the Southern District of New York, and the case was assigned to judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, who ruled that Chung could not be detained for the time being.[39][40][41] The stay on Chung's detention was extended in May.[38]
Federal agents had searched for Chung at various Columbia residences pursuant to a federal criminal warrant for harboring out-of-status noncitizens. The use of that warrant indicates that the government was likely pursuing a criminal case against Columbia wider than an immigration action against a single person.[42]
Aditya Wahyu Harsono
On March 27, 2025, Aditya Wahyu Harsono, an Indonesian citizen and hospital supply chain manager, had his visa revoked without notice[43] and was arrested by ICE at his workplace and detained in the basement of the hospital in Marshall, Minnesota before being transferred to Kandiyohi County Jail. Harsono's attorney said that hospital management was coerced by ICE into staging a meeting so that he could be apprehended. Harsono was fired from his job following his arrest.[44] When Harsono attempted to tell ICE agents that he had legal status during his arrest, he was told that the system which could verify this was "down" for the day.[45] Harsono had been a participant in the Daunte Wright protests in 2021 where he was arrested for violating a curfew order.[46] He also frequently posted in support of Gaza on social media and runs a small nonprofit to raise money for aid to Gaza.[45]
Harsono was ordered released by a district court judge on 14 May after 49 days in detention. The judge found that his arrest and detention were likely in retaliation for his political activities.[47]
Alfredo Juarez
On March 27, 2025, ICE stopped Alfredo Juarez, a labor organizer on behalf of farm workers in Washington state. ICE agents stopped his car while he was driving his wife to work, broke his window, and dragged him out of the car. Juarez was taken to an ICE facility in Ferndale, and later to ICE's Northwest Processing Center in Tacoma. Juarez's lawyers and community members said that he was targeted for his activism.[48][49]
Mahmoud Khalil
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Mahmoud Khalil, a student activist at Columbia University and lead negotiator in pro-Palestinian protests and campus occupations during the Gaza war, was taken from his Columbia residential apartment building in New York City by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on March 8, 2025.[50][51][52] The agents did not have a warrant[53] and were acting on orders from the State Department to revoke Khalil's student visa. When the agents were informed that Khalil is a lawful permanent resident, they said this status would be revoked instead.[50] He was transported to LaSalle Detention Center in Jena, Louisiana,[54] where he was held until June 20.[55]
The detention is the first publicly known deportation effort related to pro-Palestine activism during the presidency of Donald Trump, who threatened to punish students and others for allegedly engaging in activities aligned to Hamas.[50] The White House posted a picture of Khalil with the taunting caption "SHALOM, MAHMOUD" on social media. Khalil's detention has received widespread backlash from civil rights organizations, members of the Democratic Party, and lawyers, who argue that it is an attack on freedom of speech and the First Amendment.[56]
There is no criminal charge against Khalil.[57] Instead, the government's argument depends on a section of the Cold War–era Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (INA), which provides that aliens in the U.S. may be deported if the secretary of state believes their presence will have serious negative consequences for U.S. foreign policy.[58][59] Several journalists and human rights organizations have noted the connection between this law and McCarthyism.[60][61]
On April 1, 2025, New Jersey federal district judge Michael E. Farbiarz stated his court had jurisdiction over Khalil's habeas corpus case, and issued a stay on Khalil's deportation while the court considered a challenge to the constitutionality of his arrest and detention.[62][63] On April 11, in a separate case in immigration court, Louisiana immigration judge Jamee E. Comans ruled that Khalil is deportable under Secretary of State Marco Rubio's assertion that his continued presence poses "adverse foreign policy consequences". Comans said she had no authority to question that determination.[64][65] On May 28, Farbiarz ruled that the relevant section of the INA was likely unconstitutional.[66] On June 11, Farbiarz ruled that Khalil should be released from detention, though he paused the order for two days to enable the government to appeal his ruling.[67] The government told the court it would not release Khalil, alleging that he had not been truthful when he applied for his green card.[68] On June 20, Farbiarz ordered that Khalil be released on bail, and Khalil was released from custody later that day.[55]Leqaa Kordia
On March 14, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it had arrested another Columbia student, Leqaa Kordia, for overstaying her visa. Kordia is a Palestinian from the West Bank, who was residing in New Jersey, and had been previously arrested for her involvement in a protest for Gaza. DHS called Kordia a Hamas supporter but did not provide any evidence to support this claim.[69] In April, a judge granted her bond, but the government invoked a rarely used provision to prevent her release while they appealed the decision.[70] In early May it was reported that Kordia was targeted by ICE after the NYPD shared information that it had gathered on her with the federal agency. This information is being used as evidence in her deportation case. This collaboration with ICE raised questions and concerns about New York City not adhering to sanctuary laws intended to prevent local police with assisting in federal immigration enforcement efforts.[71] As of 28 May, Kordia was being held at the Prairie Land Detention Center in Texas. Kordia said she was held in an overcrowded cell for several weeks and forced to sleep on concrete. She also said she was denied halal food, accommodations for fasting and hijab and clothing accommodations. Her upcoming hearing is scheduled for 5 June in Dallas.[70]
Mohsen Mahdawi
On April 14, 2025, Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian Columbia University student and 10-year resident in the United States who was seeking US citizenship, was arrested at the ICE office in Colchester, Vermont after what he had been told would be a naturalization interview. While at Columbia, Mahdawi was one of the leaders of the pro-Palestinian protests. He had been targeted by pro-Israel groups and individuals online since 2024, including Canary Mission and Betar. Mahdawi went into hiding following the detention of Mahmoud Khalil and asked Columbia administrators to assist him in finding a safe place to live, which they refused to do. He is facing a deportation order to the West Bank, which he called "a death sentence" due to the ongoing and escalating Israeli incursions into the territory which have affected several members of his family.[72][73]
On April 14, 2025, Mahdawi's legal team filed a habeas corpus petition against Donald Trump and his administration, describing his detention as unlawful.[74] His lawyers requested a temporary restraining order to prevent him from being transferred out of Vermont by federal authorities. Vermont federal judge William K. Sessions III granted the request and ordered that Mahdawi remain in Vermont.[75] The case, in the District Court for the District of Vermont, was reassigned to Judge Geoffrey Crawford, and on April 30, Crawford granted Mahdawi's request to be released on bail, and said that the case raised a "substantial claim that the government arrested him to stifle speech with which it disagrees."[76] The Trump administration appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, asking the court for an emergency stay of Crawford's ruling and challenging the determination that Crawford had authority to make such a ruling. The case was assigned to judges Susan Carney, Alison Nathan, and Barrington Parker, and on May 9, they denied the appeal.[77]
Rümeysa Öztürk
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 | This article contains close paraphrasing of copyrighted sources. (July 2025) |
On March 25, 2025, 30-year-old Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish national on an F-1 student visa, was arrested by six masked plainclothes agents from the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) following the revocation of her visa near her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, before eventually being held in South Louisiana ICE Processing Center. The revocation of her visa and her arrest is believed to be the result of an opinion piece she had co-authored that criticised the university's response to the ongoing Israel-Gaza war.
Öztürk's arrest sparked widespread condemnation from elected officials and others. Some accused the Trump administration of targeting students for their political views without due process, while others called it a violation of civil liberties. The incident also provoked protests at Tufts University and across Massachusetts.
On May 9, Öztürk was released, pending final decision on her legal case over her detention.Ranjani Srinivasan
Srinivasan, an Indian national and Fulbright scholar at Columbia, chose to self-deport after having her visa revoked. She had been previously detained during the Hamilton Hall protests, but all charges were dismissed. Her attorney said she was not a participant in the protests. Srinivasan was also accused without evidence of being a supporter of Hamas.[69][78]
Badar Khan Suri
Khan Suri, a Georgetown University researcher from India with a student visa, was detained by federal immigration authorities on March 17, 2025.[79] The government revoked his visa, but did not charge him with a crime. He has no criminal record. Khan Suri's lawyer argued in his petition to the court that Khan Suri was targeted because of his US citizen wife's Palestinian heritage and because the government suspects that the couple opposes US foreign policy.[79] A 2018 article about the couple in the Hindustan Times said his wife's father served as a "senior political adviser to the Hamas leadership",[16] and a government spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, later accused him of "actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism" and having connections to a terrorist. Khan Suri, his attorney and his wife disputed this characterization, saying that he made social media posts "expressing support for the Palestinian people, criticizing the death toll in Gaza, affirming international law principles, and criticizing U.S. support for Israel's war in Gaza," but that he did not attend any protests, have contact with his father-in-law or express pro-Hamas or antisemitic sentiments.[80]
Khan Suri was held in Texas, where an immigration court hearing was scheduled for May 6.[27] The Georgetown chapter of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine organized a rally calling for his release.[81] In an open letter printed in the university's newspaper, The Hoya, a group of over 130 Jewish students, faculty, staff and alumni, condemned his arrest and detention, saying that "President Trump is weaponizing Jewish identity, faith and fears of antisemitism as a smokescreen for his authoritarian agenda".[27][82] Khan Suri petitioned a district court in Virginia to return him to that state,[83] and on May 14, Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles ordered Khan Suri's release from ICE detention.[84] Upon his release, Khan Suri decried the conditions of his detention, saying he was treated like a "subhuman" and treated as a high security prisoner. Khan Suri's habeas petition said that he was denied halal food, only given two hours of recreation time, and placed in a "TV room" without a bed or quiet conditions for sleeping.[80] The government then filed a motion in the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, asking it to stay Tolliver Giles' release order while the government appealed her ruling, but on July 1, the appeals court denied that motion.[85]
Momodou Taal
Taal is a Cornell University graduate student with dual United Kingdom and Gambian citizenship. On March 22, 2025, he was told to surrender himself at the ICE office in Syracuse, New York. Taal's lawyers, fearing that he would be targeted by the Trump administration, preemptively filed a lawsuit asking a New York federal judge to strike down Executive Orders 14188 and 14161 targeting student protestors. Taal's lawyers have said that he has been surveilled by law enforcement.[86]
Taal faced suspension for allegedly attending a protest at Statler Hotel to shut down a career fair where representatives from Boeing and L3Harris were recruiting. Instead of a suspension, which could have impacted his visa status, university officials chose to ban him from campus.[87]
In February 2024, during a protest against the Cornell Student Assembly's rejection of a divestment resolution, Taal led chants outside Cornell's Day Hall and told the crowd "We are in solidarity with the armed resistance in Palestine from the river to the sea".[88] Taal elaborated on his views in an interview, saying that he didn't support any particular Palestinian militant faction, but rather "What I support is the Palestinian right to resist to colonialism, as guaranteed by international law and the principle of self determination."[89]
A Jewish colleague of Taal called accusations of antisemitism against him baseless, saying "I’ve always seen Momodou treat everyone with the utmost respect, and I think it's truly awful that these false accusations of antisemitism are being weaponized."[89]
On March 28, 2025, U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Coombe ruled against Taal, saying that his lawyers had neither established that she had jurisdiction to stop the deportation nor shown that there was any clear threat to his constitutional rights that would be addressed by the lawsuit.[90] [91]
On March 31, 2025, Taal announced that he had voluntarily left the United States citing fears for his personal safety. [92]
Jeanette Vizguerra
Vizguerra, an activist for immigrant rights who came to the United States from Mexico in 1993 had obtained multiple stays of deportation under past administrations and gained a national profile in 2017 when she sought refuge from ICE in a Denver church. She was detained by ICE on March 17, 2025.[93] Her apprehension by ICE was denounced by local politicians and organizations including Jared Polis and Mike Johnston as a political persecution and urged ICE to focus on violent offenders, and US District Court Judge Nina Wang blocked her deportation.[94]
Vizguerra has described herself as a political prisoner, and she and her lawyers are contesting her deportation on the grounds that it is motivated by her protected political activities, not her immigration status. Vizguerra said that the ICE agent who arrested her had her social media pulled up on his phone. The Trump administration argued that as a noncitizen, Vizguerra had no legal basis to argue that her detention was politically motivated.[95]
In May 2025, Maria Hinojosa was able to interview Vizguerra in the GEO Group run Aurora detention center where she was being held. Hinojosa, who has experience conducting prison interviews, said that the security and conditions in the detention center were harsher than in maximum security prisons.[96][97]
Lynn-Ette & Sons farmworkers
On May 2, 2025, ICE agents pulled over a bus carrying immigrant workers for Lynn-Ette & Sons who had been in a multi-year battle with their employer over unionization. The employees were from Mexico and Guatemala and were all employed as year-round workers. Sources in contact with the workers' families said that the raid "did not appear to be a broad sweep but rather a targeted enforcement aimed at specific people" and that the agents had a list of workers they expected to find on the bus. ICE did not identify themselves during the raid, but later confirmed they had been responsible for the arrests. As of May 5, five of the workers' locations were known while the other nine were unaccounted for. Lynn-Ette & Sons denied any prior knowledge or responsibility for the raid.[98]
Vermont migrant organizers
José Ignacio “Nacho” De La Cruz and his stepdaughter Heidi Perez, both members of the farmworker-led immigrant rights group Migrant Justice, were violently arrested in Vermont by Border Patrol agents who smashed their car window and detained them.[99][100] According to a spokesperson for Migrant Justice, De La Cruz called a hotline for migrant workers and remained on the phone with them while "calmly exercising his right to remain silent, requesting that border patrol explain the cause of the traffic stop." De La Cruz and Perez are in custody at Richford immigration station pending removal proceedings. [101]
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Reactions
On April 22, 2025, over 200 higher educational institutions signed a letter pledging to resist Trump's attacks on universities, including the deportation of students. The leaders of a number of prominent universities including Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University signed the letter. Columbia University was initially absent from the list, but signed after it went public.[102]
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See also
- Canary Mission
- Democratic backsliding in the United States
- Deportation and detention of American citizens in the second Trump administration
- Donald Trump and antisemitism
- Donald Trump and fascism
- Immigration policy of the second Donald Trump administration
- Reactions to the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses
- Trumpism
- Activist deportations from Germany
References
External links
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