Trump Threatens To Deport, Imprison Foreign Students For 'illegal Protests'

President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened colleges’ federal funding for allowing “illegal protests” and said American students will be expelled.

“All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “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 the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

The social media post comes after a federal task force on antisemitism last week announced it would visit 10 college campuses that had antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel.

The institutions include: 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.

Several of these institutions had high-profile anti-war protests in the months following the attack and faced intense scrutiny from Republicans in Congress.

Trump has already signed an executive order directing the Justice Department and attorney general to take “immediate action” to prosecute antisemitic crimes like vandalism and intimidation as well as investigate “anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.”

The Departments of Health and Human Services, Education and the General Services Administration on Monday also announced a comprehensive review of Columbia University’s federal contracts and grants because of an ongoing Title VI investigation into the school.

All schools that receive federal funds must comply with Title VI, a federal law that bars discrimination based on shared ancestry, ethnic characteristics or national origin. Schools who violate the law could be at risk of losing funding.

Columbia is at risk of losing $51.4 million in federal contracts for “ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students,” according to a press release that said the government is considering “stop work orders” for those contracts. The task force also said it will conduct a comprehensive review of the more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments to Columbia.

“Institutions that receive federal funds have a responsibility to protect all students from discrimination,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Columbia’s apparent failure to uphold their end of this basic agreement raises very serious questions about the institution’s fitness to continue doing business with the United States government.”