Skip to content Skip to footer

Trump Tells Donors He’ll Deport “Any Student” Who Protests Against Gaza Genocide

Both US-born and foreign students have constitutionally recognized rights to free speech.

Former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses the Libertarian Party National Convention on May 25, 2024 in Washington, D.C.

During a donor event earlier this month, former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president this year, said that he would deport students who protest in solidarity with Palestine if he becomes president again.

Trump made the authoritarian remarks at a May 14 private campaign event with high-paying GOP donors. The Washington Post was the first to report on the former president’s comments.

Trump specifically targeted foreign students in the U.S. who are here on education visas, but suggested that any student at a college or university who participates in pro-Palestine protests could be subject to deportation under his watch.

“One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country,” Trump told his donors, adding that, “a lot of foreign students…[are] going to behave” upon hearing of that threat.

Both U.S.-born and foreign students have constitutionally recognized rights to free speech, assembly and due process in the U.S. Trump’s proposition would ignore past precedents on such matters.

Trump’s statement — specifically the phrase “any student” — indicates that he would not just seek to deport foreign students, but that he would also attempt to deport students who are U.S. citizens.

Throughout his campaign, the GOP nominee for president has commented relatively little on Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians so far; in March, he suggested that Israel’s war on Palestinians in Gaza never would have started if he had remained in the White House for a second term rather than President Joe Biden, and urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to escalate the genocide, telling him to “finish the problem.”

Trump’s comments to donors that he would flout the standards of free speech protections in the U.S. are just the latest authoritarian rhetoric he has dished out in the past months. Trump recently asked his supporters whether he should be a three-term president, presuming he wins the 2024 election, in direct violation of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution. He has also floated the idea of becoming a dictator if he wins, dubiously vowing that he would only be a dictator for one day, in order to enact anti-immigrant and anti-environmental policies.

Even if he loses, Trump suggested (as he did four years ago) that he wouldn’t accept the loss as legitimate and that he wouldn’t condemn potential violence from his supporters being conducted in his name.

“Trump wants to give skeptical voters a reason to set aside their misgivings. That’s why he won’t directly call for violence,” Political Wire’s Taegan Goddard wrote earlier this month. “But make no mistake: He’s already telling his supporters to get ready to take matters into their own hands.”

We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.

As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.

Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.

As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.

At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.

Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.

You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.