Donald Trump, the former president, declared that he was in favor of prohibiting immigration from the Gaza Strip.
In an address in Iowa, Trump said that if he were to win again, he would make his “wildly effective” travel ban cover more “terrorist-plagued nations, territories, as well as places.” He later said, “Nobody who comes from Syria, Somalia, Gaza, Yemen, Libya, or any other location that threatens our safety is coming here.”
Trump also promised that if he was elected again, his government would “cut off every cent of the funding that we give to the Palestinians and the terrorists on the very first day” and support Israel in its fight against Hamas. In addition, he pledged to “proactively deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement to pro-Jihadist protests in order to enforce our immigration laws as well as deport those who violated them from the United States,” and “revoke the learning visas of radical anti-U.S and anti-Jewish foreigners at our higher education institutions.”
Trump isn’t the only Republican running for president who wants to stop people from coming from Gaza to the US. Around a week after Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza with a terrorist attack that killed approximately 30 Americans in addition to many others, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis stated that the US should not take in refugees from the area.
At an event in Iowa, DeSantis stated, “We cannot let refugees from Gaza into the United States. I’m not going to do that. Not all of them belong to Hamas based on how they act, but they are all against Jews. All of them don’t think Israel has the right to exist.” DeSantis also asked Arab countries that are close by to take these refugees.
After Trump made it clear this week that a wider travel ban would include Gaza, Team DeSantis went after the GOP leader. Campaign spokesperson for DeSantis Andrew Romeo wrote on X, saying, “Trump literally needed a teleprompter to be able to ultimately catch up with the stand that DeSantis’ took three days ago regarding Gaza refugees.” Trump was also mocked by the “DeSantis War Room” account, which stated that DeSantis “called for this action three days prior, but we embrace the fact that Trump is following DeSantis’ strong leadership.”
Some people have pushed back by saying that Trump had previously called for bringing back and increasing the travel ban that President Biden lifted when he took office.
“Were you aware that President Trump ended the resettling of refugees from Syria as well as Somalia and had stopped resettling jihadist refugees altogether?” wrote Stephen Miller, a top staffer in Trump’s White House, on X. “He also set up the National Vetting Center in addition to adding more checks to keep dangerous people from entering the country.”
