Trump executive order paves way for Muslim ban, targeting pro-Palestinian students | Muslim Ban News

Washington, DC Civil rights advocates in the United States are sounding the alarm over a directive signed by President Donald Trump that they say lays the groundwork for a new travel ban targeting majority-Muslim countries.

The executive order, issued Monday, could also be used to target foreign nationals who are already in the United States legally and to crack down on international students who advocate for Palestinian rights, experts say.

Deepa Alagesan, an attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), an advocacy group, said the new order is bigger and worse than the xenophobic travel ban Trump imposed on several majority-Muslim countries in 2017 during his first term.

The worst part of this right now is that it is not only about banning entry into the United States to people residing outside the United States, but also using these same arguments as a basis for getting people out of the United States, Alagesan told Al Jazeera.

The new order directs administration officials to draw up a list of countries for which screening and selection information is so deficient that it justifies a partial or total suspension of the admission of nationals of these countries.

But it goes further. It calls for identifying the number of citizens who have entered the United States from these countries since 2021 under President Joe Biden and collecting relevant information on their actions and activities.

The White House then orders immediate action to expel foreign citizens from these countries whenever information is identified that could support exclusion or expulsion.

Trump's executive order also states that the administration must ensure that foreign citizens, including those residing in the United States, do not have hostile attitudes toward American citizens, culture or government and do not defend, aid or support designated foreign terrorists.

Defenders call out a chilling order

Alagesan warned that the executive order, titled Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other Threats to National Security and Public Safety, could inflict more harm on immigrant families than the 2017 travel restrictions, known collectively as Muslim ban name.

She said the orders' vague language is frightening because it appears to give U.S. agencies broad authority to recommend actions against people the administration seeks to target.

At its core, it's just another method to keep people out, to keep people out, to break up families, to incite fear, to make sure people know they are not welcome and that the government will use its force to fight against them. , Alagesan told Al Jazeera.

Other advocacy groups have also denounced the order since its release.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) said the executive order went further than the 2017 Muslim ban by giving the government greater latitude to use ideological exclusion to deny visas and deport people. people from the United States.

The ADC is calling on the Trump administration to stop stigmatizing and targeting entire communities, which only sows division, the group said in a statement.

America's promise of free speech, a principle that President Trump himself has long emphasized, now stands in stark contradiction to his new executive order.

The Muslim Public Affairs Council also warned in a statement that strengthening control measures for specific countries risks functioning as a de facto ban on Muslims under the guise of security protocols.

Maryam Jamshidi, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School, said the order appears to revive Trump's first-term travel ban, while promoting a right-wing agenda in the broader culture wars.

Parts of the decree also specifically target Palestinians and Palestinian rights defenders, Jamshidi added.

The right is very keen to perpetuate this idea that foreigners, people who are black, brown, Muslim and not white Judeo-Christian, do indeed threaten real Americans.

The ugliest action possible

In 2018, several American media outlets reported that Trump told aides that the United States should admit more immigrants from countries like Norway rather than people from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries, which he called it a shithole country.

Many right-wing politicians, including Trump's current vice president, J.D. Vance, have embraced the Great Replacement Conspiracy Theory, which posits that there is an effort to replace native-born Americans with immigrants.

Trump's recent executive order warns against foreign nationals in the United States seeking to undermine or replace American culture.

Yet experts say it is unlikely to be used as a vehicle for mass deportation.

It directs agencies to use the full extent of legal frameworks and loopholes to take the most heinous steps possible to deport people the president has decided he doesn't want here, Alagesan said.

That said, there are still laws that limit the grounds on which a person can be deported, and protections are available to people facing deportation proceedings.

Jamshidi also said it is unclear how the order would apply to deporting people, noting that it is unclear whether the cited immigration law gives the administration the power to expel foreign nationals.

The executive order relies on a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that gives the president the power to restrict entry into the United States to any class of aliens, but not to expel those already present.

This is probably not a blanket expulsion charge, Jamshidi said.

But she warned that the order could lead to greater scrutiny of people from those countries and deter political activities, particularly Palestinian solidarity, that could be perceived as going against the administration's directives.

Students from a protest encampment demonstrate in support of Palestinians in Gaza at George Washington University in Washington, DC, April 25, 2024. [Leah Millis/Reuters]
Efforts to expel student activists

The order directs U.S. officials to make recommendations to protect citizens from foreign nationals who preach or call for sectarian violence, the overthrow or replacement of the culture upon which our Constitutional Republic is based, or who provide assistance, advocacy or support for foreign terrorists.

Jamshidi said the language certainly concerns foreign nationals, including foreign students who participate in Palestine advocacy.

While pro-Israel politicians often label campus activists as pro-Hamas, Jamshidi said Trump's executive order could be used to target Palestinian rights advocates who are in the United States on student visas.

Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have previously called for the expulsion of international students.

As Palestinian solidarity protests swept the country's universities following the outbreak of the Gaza war, Israel's supporters, particularly Republicans, portrayed student protesters as a threat to campus security.

Rubio led a Senate letter to the Biden administration in October 2023, calling for the removal of international students who participated in protests in support of the Palestinians.

The letter drew parallels between the student protesters and the 9/11 attackers. He cites lessons learned on September 11, 2001, when terrorists, many of whom were studying in the United States or had overstayed their visas, carried out the deadliest attack on American soil.

Unfortunately, twenty-two years later, our country is witnessing public demonstrations of terrorist sympathizers taking to the streets and condoning Hamas' brutal attacks against the State of Israel, the letter reads.

The Republican Party's 2024 platform also calls for the expulsion of pro-Hamas radicals in order to make college campuses safe and patriotic again.

Wider implications

Dima Khalidi, director of the advocacy group Palestine Legal, said it was clear that Trump's recent executive order was designed to specifically target supporters of Palestinian rights.

She added that while the executive order does not specify Israel, pro-Israel groups have attempted to portray criticism of the U.S. ally as not only anti-Israeli or even anti-Semitic, but also anti-American. .

We have to connect it to this order, to the broader ideological imposition that's happening and part of the broader purge that Trump seems very determined to implement, Khalidi told Al Jazeera.

She said the Trump administration sought to use broad discretion under immigration law to suppress supporters of Palestinian rights because of their views and to circumvent the right to free speech.

They actually paint a picture for people of what is acceptable and what is not; what is American, what is not; what is patriotic, what is not, Khalidi told Al Jazeera.

Critics say that ultimately, while Trump's first Muslim ban targeted travelers from several Muslim-majority countries, the order has broader consequences, including on what it means to be American.

For example, the executive order calls for measures to ensure the proper assimilation of immigrants and promote a unified American identity.

Jamshidi said the order has broader implications for all kinds of groups than the initial iterations of the Muslim ban.

It's another salvo in the culture wars over rights, she told Al Jazeera.

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