The nation’s chief law-enforcement officer threatened on Thursday to expel foreign students engaging in antisemitic protests on college campuses.
“All of our students deserve to be safe,” Pam Bondi, the U.S. attorney general, said at the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Md., on Feb. 20.
“These students, who are here on visas who are threatening our American students, need to be kicked out of this country,” she added.
Many university campuses erupted in protests after Israel defended itself against Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 terror attacks. Many demonstrators sympathized with Hamas, whose charter calls for genocide against Jews, and attacked Jewish students trying to go to classes.
“These aren’t peaceful protests,” Bondi said.
Bondi said that a new U.S. Justice Department task force will investigate and prosecute federal crimes, terrorist acts and civil rights violations by Hamas supporters, including actions on college campuses.
Bondi was not alone. At her confirmation hearing last week, Linda McMahon, U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary, said that she would move to revoke student visas from foreign students threatening their Jewish colleagues, which would require them to go back home.
A recent American Jewish Committee survey found that more than one-third of Jewish college students and recent graduates (35%) said that they experienced Jew-hatred on campus, and more than one-fifth (22%) was or felt excluded from a campus event because of its religion.
In addition, 32% said that they felt uncomfortable or unsafe at a campus event as Jews.
