Some Americans suffer from political amnesia. They denounce efforts by the Trump administration to deport foreign student visa-holders for supporting Hamas and disrupting university campuses, forgetting that the Carter administration did almost the exact same thing.
No one called Jimmy Carter a fascist authoritarian who “abducted” or “disappeared” foreign students simply for engaging in free speech. But many seem eager to level these incendiary accusations against Trump.
Both before and after Iranians seized the American Embassy in Tehran in November 1979, taking dozens of Americans hostage, well-organized groups of Iranian students were protesting in the U.S. over the Carter administration’s support for the Shah of Iran. With more than 54,000 Iranian students in the U.S. in 1978, Iranian visa-holders constituted the largest block of international students on American campuses.
They had two activist organizations — the Iranian Students Association, largely representing communists and socialists, and the Organization of Iranian Muslim Students, largely representing Islamists. Think of them as the Students for Justice in Palestine of their day. Both groups agreed that they hated the Shah, wished to see him removed and punished, and blamed the Carter administration for protecting him.
A week after Carter’s election in 1976, hundreds of Iranian students gathered to protest in downtown Houston. Nearly 100 of them were arrested. Back then, protests without permits that blocked city streets would result in arrests, unlike today’s more lax enforcement of the law. According to the Iranian Students Association, “deportation orders [were] issued for all the students and a bail of $2000 was set for each.”
Over the next few years, protests occurred at Navarro College in Texas, the University of Kentucky, and in Washington D.C., leading to further arrests. In early 1979, more than 2,000 Iranians, mostly students, demonstrated in front of a home in Beverly Hills where the Shah’s mother and sister were staying.
Historian Will Teague recounts that with the unanimous support of the city council, “The mayor of Beverly Hills sent a telegram to the Carter administration, urging ‘the deportation of the Iranian students and other people on visitors visa [sic] who participated in the riot.’… Attorney General Griffin Bell publicly commented that deportation would be considered in the case of any Iranian found guilty of having participated.”
Even before the U.S. Embassy in Iran was seized, the Carter administration was threatening students who participated in anti-Shah protests with revocation of their visas and deportation. No major political figures argued that these students were merely engaging in free speech. Instead, there was bipartisan support for deporting foreign students who caused disruptions and undermined American foreign policy.
Less than a week after the embassy takeover in Tehran, the New York Times reported that “President Carter instructed Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti today to begin deportation proceedings against Iranian students who are found to be in the United States illegally.” The Times noted, “White House officials said the deportation order was designed to lower the possibility of additional demonstrations that might further increase tensions and endanger the lives of the hostages.”
The priority was to limit the political influence of foreign student visa-holders, not protect their free-speech rights.
To determine the legal status of Iranian students, President Carter required all of them to contact immigration officials for interviews and to provide documentation to demonstrate that they were complying with the terms of their visas. A federal judge initially blocked this order, claiming it discriminated by national origin, but an appeals court quickly over-ruled that decision. The appellate judges deferred to the president’s authority on immigration and foreign policy matters.
According to the New York Times, “54,966 Iranian students had reported to immigration authorities for interviews. Of those… 45,678 were found to have the proper credentials, 6,510 were out of status and subject to deportation.” It is unclear if those interviews collected information on student participation in protests and whether that was part of determining if they were out of compliance with the requirements of their visas.
Regardless, the scale of President Trump’s actions against foreign students pales in comparison to Carter’s actions. Trump has not ordered tens of thousands of foreign students to be interviewed by immigration officials to determine if they can remain in the country. Trump has not (at least yet) slated thousands of foreign students for deportation.
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Trump claims that he is only targeting for deportation those who have provided support to a designated terrorist organization and contributed to the Title VI civil rights violations of their fellow students. For Carter, it seemed sufficient for a student to protest against American foreign policy interests to face deportation.
If Trump’s critics on foreign student deportation didn’t employ double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all. What President Trump is doing with respect to foreign students is consistent with the political precedents set by President Carter.
Jay P. Greene is senior research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation.
