AG Bondi says violent anti-Israel student protesters in US on visas ‘need to be kicked out’

Attorney General Pam Bondi said anti-Israel student protesters who are in the United States on visas and threatening American students “need to be kicked out of the country.”

“All of our students deserve to be safe,” Bondi said on Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) near Washington, D.C., while joining the stage with Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and radio show host Ben Ferguson on a live podcast of the “Verdict with Ted Cruz” podcast. “First of all, these students who are here on visas, who are threatening our American students, need to be kicked out of this country.” 

“Amen,” Cruz responded to Bondi. 

Bondi, who was sworn in as the nation’s 87th attorney general Feb. 5, added that carrying out the rule of law as the nation’s top cop is “pretty basic.”

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Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks with Sen. Ted Cruz at the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington, D.C., Feb. 20. (Getty Images)

Bondi added that the anti-Israel college protests that rocked the U.S. were anything but “peaceful protests.” 

“When I was just a citizen, before I had this job … I’m watching these — but these aren’t peaceful protests. We all believe in peaceful protest. Oh. I’m sorry, unless you’re a liberal, and you don’t want a parent to quietly pray outside an abortion clinic, or you’re a Catholic, or a parent at a school board, they’re going to call you a domestic terrorist,” she said, adding that the anti-Israel protests were “violent.”

Agitators and student protesters flooded college campuses nationwide in 2024 to protest the war in Israel, which also included spiking instances of antisemitism and Jewish students publicly speaking out that they did not feel safe on some campuses. 

A pro-Palestinian demonstrator holds a flag on the rooftop of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University on April 30, 2024.  (Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Protesters on Columbia University’s campus in New York City, for example, took over the school’s Hamilton Hall, while schools such as UCLA, Harvard and Yale worked to clear spiraling student encampments where protesters demanded their elite schools completely divest from Israel. 

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A protester breaks glass at Columbia University on April 30, 2024, in New York City. (Getty Images)

Terrorist organization Hamas launched a war in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which initially fanned the flames of antisemitism on campuses in the form of protests, menacing graffiti and students reporting that they felt as if it was “open season for Jews on our campuses.” The protests heightened to the point that Jewish students at some schools, including Columbia, were warned to leave campus for their own safety. 

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Bondi added, in her conversation with Cruz and Ferguson, that after her 15 days as attorney general, the “volume of how bad” and politicized the Department of Justice had become under former President Joe Biden “concerned” her “the most.”

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that violent anti-Israel protesters in the U.S. on visas should be deported.  (Getty Images)

“What concerned me the most? It’s the volume of how bad it was, and it still is. We’re working on it. It’s day by day by day, but we’ve got a team of great people. And on day one, I issued 14 executive orders. And number one is the weaponization ends. And it ends now. And that’s what we do,” she said. 

Overall, however, Bondi said that “a lot” of DOJ employees have remarked to her that they are grateful for her leadership, arguing that the majority of employees want “to fight crime.” 

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“The majority of the people are great people, who went to law school, became prosecutors, became law enforcement agents to fight crime,” she said.