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President Donald Trump ordered a law enforcement crackdown on antisemitism on college campuses, including removing pro-Hamas activists with student visas from the country, Fox News has learned.
Trump's directive gives all federal agencies a 60-day window to identify civil and criminal authorities available to combat antisemitism and deport anti-Jewish activists who broke any laws.
"It shall be the policy of the United States to combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence," the order reads.
A White House fact sheet obtained by Fox News states that immediate action will be taken by the Department of Justice to protect law and order, while also investigating and punishing anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.
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Police officers set up fences at an anti-Israel protest at Columbia University. (AP/Yuki Iwamura)
Additionally, Trump signed two education-related executive orders. One strips federal funding from K-12 schools that teach critical race theory or radical gender ideology and another supports school choice.
Trump also signed an executive order to establish the White House Task Force on Celebrating America's 250th Birthday. The group's task will be to plan and execute "an extraordinary celebration of the 250th Anniversary of American Independence" on July 4, 2026.
The order also reinstates one that he signed on June 26, 2020, to protect American monuments, memorials and statues, while combating criminal violence.
"Recent examples of conduct necessitating reinstatement of this order include pro-Hamas-related vandalism of historically significant public monuments and related assaults on Federal officers and employees following October 7, 2023, including vandalism of the exterior of the Department of the Treasury and of statues in Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. on June 8, 2024, and the assaults on Federal officers and vandalism of the Christopher Columbus Memorial Fountain and Freedom Bell at Union Station in Washington, D.C. on July 24, 2024," the order reads.
Anti-Israel demonstrators deface property on the day of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 24, 2024. (Katie Pavlich)
House Republicans released a report last month that urged the federal government to do more to combat antisemitism, including by conditioning federal aid to colleges to incentivize more strict policies against anti-Jewish bias, the New York Post reported.
The report came after Columbia University and other major schools were host to anti-Israel encampments on campus, where numerous antisemitic incidents were reported after the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks in southern Israel.
Republicans accused Biden's State Department and Department of Homeland Security of stonewalling requests for the number of visa holders among those anti-Israel agitators, the GOP report said, according to the Post.
"Immediately after the jihadist terrorist attacks against the people of Israel on October 7, 2023, pro-Hamas aliens and left-wing radicals began a campaign of intimidation, vandalism, and violence on the campuses and streets of America," the Trump White House fact sheet states.
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The White House said the previous administration turned a "blind eye" to campus antisemitism and a "coordinated assault on public order" that Trump has promised to reverse.
His selection of an Israeli ally, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has already signaled strong support for the Jewish state against Israel's critics around the world.
Since 2023, Stefanik has served as a conservative firebrand who has repeatedly grilled "morally bankrupt" college leaders over their handling of antisemitism on campus after the Hamas terror attacks on Israel.
Most notably, Stefanik grilled Ivy League college administrators from Penn and Harvard, her alma mater, in December 2023 regarding whether "calling for the genocide of Jews" violates the respective school’s codes of conduct. The school leaders, however, waffled in their responses.
Anti-Israel protesters hang signs from Columbia University in New York City April 30, 2024. (Rashid Umar Abbasi for Fox News Digital)
"It can be, depending on the context," Claudine Gay, Harvard’s president at the time, responded when asked if "calling for the genocide of Jews" violated school conduct rules.
"Antisemitic speech when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation – that is actionable conduct, and we do take action," Gay said when pressed to answer "yes" or "no" if calls for the genocide of Jews breaks school rules.
Gay and Penn’s president at the time, Liz Magill, resigned from their high-profile positions shortly after the hearing, while footage of the exchanges spread rapidly on social media.
Trump's attempt to crack down on funding for schools that fail to fight antisemitism or promote critical race theory comes amid intense controversy over an Office of Management and Budget memo announcing a temporary freeze to all federal aid and assistance programs – with potentially trillions of taxpayer dollars halted.
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A federal judge on Tuesday paused the freeze in response to a lawsuit brought by nearly two dozen Democratic attorneys general. On Wednesday, the Trump administration rescinded the freeze on federal grants and loans.
In his first term, Trump threatened to strip federal funding from cities that failed to stop anti-police riots that followed the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, but he left office before he could make good on that threat, the Post reported.
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