Trump Proposes to Deport Pro-Palestinians to Appease Israel. Could It Happen Here?

In amongst its authoritarian grab for power, its drive to disempower minorities and to establish white supremacy, the US Trump administration has commenced a targeted campaign against foreign pro-Palestinian students and academics, who had been outspoken against Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip, whilst legally living in the States and prior to the Republicans having taken office in January.

This crackdown comprises of revoking the visas or green cards, permanent resident status, of vocal pro-Palestinians advocates, with secretary of state Mark Rubio telling reporters on 27 March that the US State Department has already revoked the visas of around 300 noncitizens, and while he’s not sure how many are on-campus pro-Palestine activists, he said, “there’s a lot of them now”.

US Immigration has confirmed that at least nine former and current university students and professors, some of whom held green cards while others were on student visas that allowed them to reside and study full-time in the United States, have been disappeared off the streets.

And there are three high-profile cases that have caught global attention. This involves the detention and attempt to deport Syrian-born student activist Mahmoud Khalil, who is of Palestinian heritage, along with Turkish doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk and Indian university lecturer Badar Khan Suri.

This drive to deport pro-Palestinian activists, who are legally living in the US, involves targets being swooped upon by plainclothes ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents and disappeared, which ultimately denies these people their legally guaranteed right to freedom of speech, under the US Constitution, and it has all the hallmarks of an authoritarian regime purging dissidents.

Watching these developments from afar, many in Australia are concerned about the influence this nation’s closest and much more powerful ally will have on our domestic sphere, especially as Liberal leader Peter Dutton has been spruiking one of his favoured deportation drives if elected as a result of the upcoming May national vote, and this time he’s going to target so-called “antisemitic” conduct.

Disappeared for opposing genocide

Mahmoud Khalil’s 8 March disappearing in the US has garnered the most attention of those being slated for deportation. Plainclothes agents approached and led him away from the foyer of his apartment block, as they advised him that his green card had been revoked, with the likely reason being that he was the chief negotiator for the 2024 Columbia University Gaza encampment protests.

Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national, was arrested and detained by masked ICE agents in Washington DC on 17 March, with the Department of Homeland Security charging him with “spreading Hamas propaganda” and having “close connections to a known or suspected terrorist”.

President Trump signed a 30 January executive order to combat antisemitism in the United States, which comprises of taking “forceful and unprecedented steps to marshal all federal resources to combat the explosion of antisemitism on our campuses and in our streets.” The order frames pro-Palestinians as “pro-Hamas aliens” involved in “pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation”.

The latest high-profile pro-Palestinian arrested is Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk, whose crime appears to be having written an article condemning Israeli human rights violations that was printed in the institution’s student newspaper.

For this noncrime the woman from Türkiye was approached by six plainclothes and masked ICE agents on a street and swept away in broad daylight.

All of these cases have similar characteristics in that the targeted noncitizens were approached by plainclothes agents, who did their utmost not to properly identify themselves, and they were then taken away without notifying anyone else as to their whereabouts.

Advocates for the disappeared then applied to local courts to ensure that the targets were being detained within state borders. However, as the court orders are being delivered, it’s coming to light that the targets are already being detained inside ICE facilities in the southern state of Louisiana.

Construing advocacy as prejudice

In order to facilitate the deportation of pro-Palestinian noncitizens, the Trump administration is invoking the little used Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which grants the secretary of state the power to deport noncitizens who are deemed to pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the United States.

Liberal opposition leader Peter Dutton told the Sky News Antisemitism Summit held in February that if he is elected to the top office in May, he’ll be amending the Migration Act 1958 (Cth), so that the character test contained in section 501 includes antisemitic conduct as reason for deportation, with the clear issue being the potential conflation of pro-Palestine advocacy with antisemitism.

And this was no one-off thought bubble coming from Dutton, however, as the matter has been raised again. The Liberal leader has also been bragging about overseeing the deportation of 6,000 noncitizens over his time at Immigration. And he’s now spruiked holding a referendum in order to empower ministers to strip dual nationals of their citizenship over non-allegiance to Australia.

Then immigration minister Scott Morrison triggered a noncitizen deportation drive that continues to this day, when he amended the Migration Act in late 2014. And this included changes to section 116 of the Migration Act to allow for the deportation of noncitizens for merely posing a risk to “the health, safety or good order of the Australian community or a segment” of it.

Former CFMEU delegate and Rebels bikie boss Dean Martin was slated for deportation last August, after his visa was cancelled on character grounds, while having no criminal convictions against his name. But this was prevented after he was able to prove his Indigenous heritage, as the High Court has ruled that First Nations people cannot be considered noncitizens for deportation purposes.

A grave new world

The New York Times reports that Trump administration officials are warning that the disappearing of pro-Palestinian advocating noncitizens from their neighbourhoods, in an attempt to see them deported to the nations from which they came, only reflects the beginning of a broader campaign against pro-Palestinian protesters in general.

Both Labor and the Liberals have been taking afront to the massive pro-Palestinian movement that erupted in this country, following the commencement of the most brutal demonstration of inhumanity in recent times.

In the deportation threats coming from Dutton, however, there is something of an assertion that his government would be intervening where prime minister Anthony Albanese has feared to tread.

Th Antisemitism Summit, that saw Dutton hailed as something of a potential saviour, was predicated upon the then ongoing spate of “antisemitic” crimes, which the AFP confirmed in early March had been a “fake terror plot” staged by organised crime in order to gain an advantage over police.

But both NSW Labor and the NSW Liberals are continuing to decry a wave of antisemitic hate across this state, despite the guts of it having been shown to be an elaborate ruse.

Dutton’s call to extend the antisemitic deportation drive to dual nationals has come following the “criminal con job” having been exposed. And the Liberal leader is continuing with these suggestions, despite the unlikelihood of running a successful referendum on the issue, obviously to lay down the foundations for an antisemitism deportation drive, using whatever means available to him.

Indeed, as the Trump administration plans to broaden its campaign to eject and suppress pro-Palestinian sentiment in the public sphere, the real danger we’re facing is that a Dutton prime ministership will be emboldened to act on the long-term dog whistling and deportation predilections that the federal member for Dickson has repeatedly displayed over his illustrious career.