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

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

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

“The worst part of it now, it’s looking to not just ban people outside the US entering the US, but also to use these same rationales as a basis to get people out of the US,” Alagesan told Al Jazeera.

The new order directs administration officials to compile a list of nations “for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries”.

It goes further, however. It calls for identifying the number of citizens who entered the US from those countries since 2021 — during Joe Biden’s presidency — and collecting “relevant” information about their “actions and activities”.

The White House then orders “immediate steps” to deport foreign citizens from those countries “whenever information is identified that would support the exclusion or removal”.

Trump’s executive order also says the administration must ensure that foreign citizens, including those in the US, “do not bear hostile attitudes” towards American citizens, culture or government and “do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists”.

Advocates call order ‘scary’

Alagesan warned that the decree, dubbed “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats”, could inflict more harm on immigrant families than the 2017 travel restrictions, known collectively as the “Muslim ban”.

She said the order’s vague language is “scary” because it appears to give US agencies broad authority to recommend actions against people whom the administration seeks to target.

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

Other advocacy groups have also decried the order since its publication.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) said the decree goes further than the 2017 “Muslim ban” by giving the government “wider latitude to use ideological exclusion” to deny visas and remove people from the US.

“ADC calls 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 freedom of speech and expression — a principle that President Trump himself has long highlighted — now stands in stark contradiction to his new executive order.”

The Muslim Public Affairs Council also cautioned in a statement that enhancing vetting measures for specific countries risks “functioning as a de facto Muslim ban under the guise of security protocols”.

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

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

“The right is very invested in continuing this notion that foreigners, people who are Black, brown, Muslim — not white Judeo-Christian, effectively — are threatening ‘real Americans’.”

Jamshidi also said it is not clear how the order would go about deporting people, noting that it is not established whether the immigration law cited gives the administration authority to remove foreign nationals.

The decree relies on a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that gives the president power to restrict entry to the US for “any class of aliens” — but not to remove people already here.

“This is probably not a blanket deportation charge,” Jamshidi said. But she warned that the order could lead to further scrutiny against people from those countries and deter political activities — especially Palestinian solidarity — that could be perceived as running afoul of the administration’s guidelines.

Efforts to deport student activists

The order directs US officials to make recommendations to “protect” citizens from foreign nationals “who preach or call for sectarian violence, the overthrow or replacement of the culture on which our constitutional Republic stands, or who provide aid, advocacy, or support for foreign terrorists”.

Jamshidi said the language is “certainly about foreign nationals, including foreign students who are participating in Palestine advocacy”.

With pro-Israel politicians often calling campus activists “pro-Hamas”, Jamshidi said Trump’s edict could be used to target Palestinian rights advocates who are in the US on student visas.

Both Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have previously called for deporting international students.

As Palestinian solidarity protests swept the country’s universities following the outbreak of the war on Gaza, Israel’s supporters, especially Republicans, painted student demonstrators as a threat to campus safety.

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 Palestinians.

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

“Sadly, twenty-two years later, our country is witnessing public displays from terrorist sympathizers taking to the streets and condoning Hamas’ brutal attacks against the State of Israel,” the letter read.

The 2024 Republican Party platform also calls for deporting “pro-Hamas radicals” to make college campuses “safe and patriotic again”.

Dima Khalidi, director of the advocacy group Palestine Legal, said it is “clear” that Trump’s recent executive order was crafted to specifically target Palestinian rights supporters.

Critics say the bottom line is that, while Trump’s first “Muslim ban” targeted travelers from several Muslim-majority countries, this order has farther-reaching consequences, including about what it means to be an American.

For example, the decree 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 sorts of groups than the initial iterations of the Muslim ban”.

“It’s another salvo in the right’s culture wars,” she said.

Source: Al Jazeera English

Opinion by Zara Mohammed

The reverberations of the Israel-Gaza conflict have been felt acutely by British Muslims in the year since the attacks of 7 October. As I travel across our communities, I’ve witnessed first-hand how the conflict has challenged once again our sense of security and our place within British society.

The human cost is staggering. I’ve spoken with British Palestinians who have lost dozens of family members in Gaza. Parents call me, distraught after their children have been arrested for their pro-Palestinian advocacy. University students fear deportation for criticizing Israel.

The calls for peace and justice for Palestinians echo far beyond the Muslim community. People of all faiths and none have taken to the streets in diverse, impassioned marches. With each passing day, as the civilian death toll in Gaza and beyond mounts, the case against Israel for having committed war crimes grows stronger. This is not a Muslim issue; it’s a human rights issue that concerns us all.

Yet British Muslims find themselves caught up in this, thrown into “culture wars” not of their choosing. While we stand in solidarity with those facing mortal suffering, we are confronted by an alarming surge in Islamophobia. The conflict has been cynically manipulated to stoke hatred against Muslims, orchestrated not only by far-right elements, but also by those who deploy harmful tropes to silence peaceful advocacy for Palestine.

The racist riots we witnessed in England in the summer were, in part, a reflection of this – fueled by false narratives of “two-tier policing”. Just this summer, we saw leading politicians make calls to ban the sacred Muslim affirmation “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) and declare that “Not all cultures are equally valid” when talking of recent immigrants who apparently “hate” Israel. Muslim politicians face accusations of being controlled by Islamists or pursuing “sectarian” agendas.

In workplaces across the country, Muslims struggle to process the horrors they are witnessing while navigating difficult conversations with colleagues. Even longstanding inter-faith relationships have been strained. While many Jewish and Muslim colleagues have reached out to support one another, the polarization has taken its toll. There has been a concerted effort to frame this as a Muslim-Jewish issue, disregarding the millions of others who oppose the violence on humanitarian grounds.

Communities have turned to us for guidance on how to help, how to challenge harmful narratives, and how to maintain hope as the violence continues. Mosques, seeking to provide spiritual solace, have faced vandalism and attacks. Schools grapple with students wearing Palestinian badges, leaving many young people confused and conflicted.

The physical manifestations of hate are impossible to ignore. I myself experienced a hate crime on the London Underground, where someone shouted at me: “You lot are all taking over.”

Yet despite these challenges, there is hope. We can build common bonds that would bypass the urge to “choose sides”, while adhering to our deeply held view that the unfolding genocide in Palestine must stop.

Source: The Guardian