Liberty’s Getting Trumped In US

The first two months of Trump 2.0 have been a flurry of activity with very little effect. Despite unprecedented claims of executive power, many of Trump’s promises – even things he said were going to be easy – have gone unfulfilled. But a flailing Trump seems to have found one area where he can get something done, and he’s determined to punish universities and cancel visas, no matter how counterproductive this might be.Federal courts have ordered that employees who were subject to mass firings be reinstated; other agencies have scrambled to re-hire critical employees who were let go in the confusion. Slowly, cancellation of federal funds to programmes required by law is being reversed, either as Republican members of Congress beg the administration for reinstatements, or as courts order the programmes to go back into effect. Trump had promised he would end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours but now claims he was joking. Tariffs have gone into effect, then been cancelled, then put back into effect, then cancelled again, even as Trump claims that this time, he’s serious, and they definitely won’t be delayed or cancelled again. It turns out doing unpopular things is harder than Trump had thought, and even when courts move slowly, illegal acts get overturned.These failures are the only way the deportation of Columbia University student Ranjani Srinivasan makes any sense. Srinivasan, a doctoral student studying urban planning, found her student visa revoked without notice in retaliation for taking part in protests against Israeli govt policies last year. Despite not even being accused of a crime, she avoided arrest only by fleeing to Canada. The executive branch has enormous power over visas, including visas (commonly known as green cards) that allow non-citizens to live and work in US. State department can cancel such visas essentially at will. In Srinivasan’s case, we have an administration goal – punishing protests against Israeli govt policies – and a way to carry it out that’s not subject to judicial oversight. Trump might want to go further, banning protests entirely, but since protests aren’t illegal, he can’t criminalise them directly. Instead, the administration is leveraging areas in which it does have power – over visas, over funding for universities – to try and penalise anyone it can for taking part in such protests. The logic is straightforward: we need to do something about these protests (even if they ended months ago), and this is something, so we need to do it.The fact that Srinivasan didn’t do anything illegal doesn’t matter, nor does the fact that all of this is completely counterproductive. Deportations of Srinivasan and others haven’t shut down protests but have caused more to erupt. Similarly, Trump administration’s threats to cut research funding for Columbia because of the protests ignore the fact that the university didn’t support them: it did everything it could to shut them down, closing the campus, calling in police, punishing students for taking part – and faced a wave of criticism from the Left for having done so. Attacking Columbia after all that sends a signal that no amount of compliance with the Trump administration is going to be enough, that universities will be targeted no matter what they do, likely leading to more resistance, not less.Deporting students and even permanent residents may well be within powers of the executive, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. *Higher education in US brings in billions of dollars from students around the world looking to get a US diploma. * People who come to US as students often decide to stay, giving US companies access to some of the best and brightest people from around the world. * Even those who go back home after graduating retain knowledge about US, and perhaps affection for it, increasing American influence. * Today, there are more than a million foreign students studying in US; since they pay higher tuition rates than local students, losing them would mean many colleges and universities going out of business. As important as higher education is to US economy, tourism is even more central: uncertainty in the visa process, and anger at Trump administration in general, has already meant a decline in foreign visitors. This year, the number of foreign travellers coming to US was expected to increase by about 9%; it’s now expected to drop by about 5%. Stories about German tourists being detained for weeks in solitary confinement or Canadians being shackled and sent to crowded prison cells, should make foreigners nervous about crossing the US border, where guards can arrest visitors for any reason, or no reason at all.Whether the administration intends it or not, the message these actions send to people around the world is that they’re not welcome, that their visas don’t matter, that they have no recourse against a border guard who doesn’t speak their language or just doesn’t like the way they look. Unlike most of the actions Trump administration has been trying to take, cancelling visas is generally legal. It’s a show of power – look what we can do to you! But it’s also a sign of weakness. Like a toddler breaking his own toys to show how angry he is, the administration has found something it has power over, and is determined to use it, even if they’re only hurting themselves.The writer, a professor of govt and politics, teaches at Fairleigh Dickinson University, US