More than 60 Philly-area rabbis sign a letter opposing Trump’s targeting of foreign college students

More than 60 Philadelphia-area rabbis and cantors have signed a letter condemning the Trump administration’s treatment of international college students, saying its targeting of pro-Palestinian demonstrators does not make Jewish students safer.

Jewish clergy across the country are concerned about a rise in antisemitism, the leaders wrote, and some have experienced bomb threats and vandalism at their synagogues and schools. But “detaining and deporting students without due process will not make our community safer.”

“Already,” the letter states, “we have seen students arrested without a warrant, sent to detention centers without their families being notified, and threatened with deportation without a hearing. These actions directly endanger these students and threaten the very foundations of American democracy.”

The Philadelphia statement follows one that was issued last week by a coalition of Jewish organizations, which said President Donald Trump was making Jews less safe by targeting students who protested the war in Gaza.

Those 10 groups, gathered by the nonpartisan Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said that there was no doubt antisemitism was increasing but that they opposed the implication that students were being punished for constitutionally protected speech.

“We firmly reject the false choice between confronting antisemitism and upholding democracy,” wrote the group, which includes HIAS, the international immigrant-aid organization, along with groups from the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist wings of the faith.

T’ruah, a national, rabbinical human-rights organization based in New York, supported the efforts of the Philadelphia rabbis to organize the letter, as did their colleagues at Diaspora Alliance.

Most of those who signed are Reconstructionists, a movement of Judaism that seeks to unite Jewish tradition and belief with the way people live today.

The letter follows similar statements issued in recent weeks by Jewish groups in Michigan, New Mexico, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Illinois, and North Carolina.

“There is a growing resistance to these unconstitutional efforts,” said Rabbi David Teutsch, a professor emeritus and former president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, who authored the letter.

The administration’s disregard for due process of law affects not just college students, he said, but potentially everyone. “Silence is unacceptable,” he said in an interview Wednesday.

Trump has promised to mount the largest deportation campaign in American history, including seeking the ouster of international college students who have come here from around the world.

In January, Trump issued an executive order that his administration said was designed to “combat the explosion of anti-Semitism on our campuses and in our streets,” and directed government authorities to “investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.”

Since then federal agents have searched dorm rooms at Columbia University and seized a Tufts University student off a Massachusetts street in an arrest that neighbors said looked like a kidnapping. Haverford College and Bryn Mawr College have issued fresh guidance to students in case they are approached by ICE agents.

More than 1,700 international students at 265 colleges and universities have had their visas revoked.

Two students from India who attend Gannon University, a small Catholic school in Erie, sued the administration over its cancellation of their ability to study in this country. The judge in that case issued a temporary restraining order that blocked the government from taking action and reinstated the students’ legal status.

Those two students did not participate in protests, their attorney said, though both had paid a fine after being charged with disorderly conduct. In many cases the reasons for revocation are unknown.

Rabbi Beth Janus, copresident of the Board of Rabbis of Greater Philadelphia, said she was disturbed that Trump “is touting a lot of what he’s doing as a way to protect Jews or fight antisemitism. I feel we as Jews, American Jews, are being weaponized. His goal is to take away rights and to scare, harass, and deport immigrants.”

Antisemitism is rising, she said Wednesday, and people who violate the law should be prosecuted. Cutting funding to colleges hurts that effort on campuses, she said.

“If you want to fight antisemitism,” she said, “you give universities money to fight antisemitism.”

Some Jewish organizations strongly support Trump’s agenda, saying that tough action is overdue.

Nathan Diament, executive director of public policy for the Orthodox Union, the nation’s largest Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization, told NBC News that his constituents were pleased to see the White House taking antisemitism seriously.

“Certainly the segment of the American Jewish community that we represent appreciates that President Trump and his team are being much more aggressive in fighting the surge of antisemitism that we’ve seen for more than a year and a half,” Diament told NBC.

The highest-profile student case — and the one on which the Philadelphia Jewish leaders focused in their letter — is that of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student now being held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana.

Khalil is a legal permanent U.S. resident who served as spokesperson for activists during large campus demonstrations that opposed the war in Gaza and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Federal agents detained him in the lobby of his Manhattan apartment on March 8, the first arrest in Trump’s move against pro-Palestinian activists.

Trump officials have not accused Khalil of any crimes, but argue he should be deported because of his beliefs. An immigration judge in Louisiana ruled this month that the government’s assertion that Khalil’s presence posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences” met legal requirements for deportation.

In what is titled “An Open Letter from Philadelphia Jewish Clergy Calling for the Release of Mahmoud Khalil,” the rabbis and cantors said his temporary disappearance and resurfacing in Louisiana “should send chills down the spine of anyone who believes in the rule of law, free speech, and the right to protest.”

“By detaining Khalil and threatening to take away his Green Card without following this process, the U.S. is overturning precedent and violating his basic rights as a legal resident,” the letter said. “As Jewish leaders charged with keeping our communities safe, we reject the administration’s claim that depriving immigrant protesters of their right to due process will make Jews safer. …

“University campuses should be protected as places of animated debate and discourse so that they can fulfill their mission of research, inquiry and discovery. This entails the protection of free and disagreeable speech and the right to protest.”

A green card is different from U.S. citizenship, and holders can have their residency revoked under certain circumstances, usually after they have been convicted of a crime.

The Philadelphia clergy said universities can and should discipline students who engage in hate speech or incitement, whether against Jews or any other group.

However, they said, the administration’s actions against colleges “do nothing to protect Jewish students but only send a message to universities that they must obey the directives of the Trump administration or be punished.”

“We call on all institutions to stand up for democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, and the independence of institutions of higher education,” the letter said, “by loudly opposing the administration’s actions.”

This article contains information from the Associated Press.