“It shall be the policy of the United States to combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.” So states an executive order signed this week by President Trump, allotting all US department and agency heads 60 days to come up with meaningful new ways to fight the rise in anti-Jewish incidents in America.Should these officials need of inspiration, the order also refers to existing immigration laws, which permit the immediate deportation of any resident alien who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or supports a terrorist organization.” It hardly takes a seasoned lawyer to realize the order’s implications: Non-citizens — including resident aliens or foreign nationals here on a student visa — who’ve spent the past year marching and waving the flags of Hamas, Hezbollah, or other groups designated by the US Department of State as terrorist organizations may soon find themselves with a one-way ticket back home.
It’s a policy I first suggested nearly a year ago.Like clockwork, the president’s critics rose to declare their opposition. Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, which represents more than 1,600 campuses nationwide, called it the “most irresponsible public policy” he had ever witnessed and called for the order’s reversal.As an academic, I welcome every defense of the First Amendment.But this one, alas, is misguided: As the scholar Ilya Shapiro noted recently, “it’s properly the job — the duty — of the government to screen out visitors and migrants who could be harmful to our country.” Case law, too, is thick with instances of immigration judges revoking visa status based on an individual’s support for terrorism.
None of this is difficult to understand, and the administration deserves a round of applause for doing its most basic job and upho...