The move comes as federal agencies consider pulling funding for Columbia University.
President Donald Trump warned Tuesday that his administration will stop federal funding to colleges that allow “illegal protests” and will deport foreign students who participate.
“All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” Trump
wrote in a post 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 ... the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Other than saying protesters should not wear masks, Trump did not go into detail about what could render a protest illegal.
The message comes a day after the Trump administration
ordered federal agencies to review their financial ties with Columbia University in New York City and consider cutting tens of millions of dollars in grants and contracts over what officials say was the school’s inability to deal with anti-Semitism in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the administrators tasked with reviewing Columbia University’s grants, said in a statement that “anti-Semitism ... is a spiritual and moral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethalities comparable to history’s most deadly plagues,” adding that “making America healthy means building communities of trust and mutual respect, based on speech freedom and open debate.”
In response to the directive, Columbia University said in a
statement that it is “fully committed to combatting antisemitism” on its campus and is reviewing statements made by the Trump administration.
“We look forward to ongoing work with the new federal administration to fight antisemitism, and we will continue to make all efforts to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff,” the school said.
Columbia University has been the site of numerous demonstrations against Israel since the Hamas attacks. Last spring, a number of students camped out on school property and, at one point, took over a school building.
A school group that was involved in organizing the protests, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, said
earlier this week that a third student involved in the protests was expelled. The organization suggested that the expulsions were connected to an announcement made by the Department of Justice (DOJ) last week that it would
create a federal task force to investigate 10 universities, including Columbia, that had “incidents of Antisemitism.”
His latest post came days after Barnard College, an affiliate of Columbia University, saw pro-Palestinian protesters injure an employee, who later went to the hospital, as they tried to get into a building.
Meanwhile, the White House
said in January that the administration could deport “resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests” at colleges starting after the October 2023 terrorist attack in Israel—if they continued to partake in such activities. “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before,” Trump also said.
Toward the end of the first Trump administration, in 2020, cities and colleges across the United States faced months of Black Lives Matter protests and riots in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
