At campaign rally, Trump vows to bar Hamas sympathizers, Gazan refugees if elected

CLIVE, Iowa — Doubling down on the hardline immigration policies that have long animated his base, former US president Donald Trump vowed Monday to bar Gazan refugees from the United States and immediately expand his first-term travel ban on citizens of some Muslim countries if he wins a second term.

Speaking to supporters in Iowa, Trump said that if he returns to the Oval Office, he will immediately begin “ideological screening” for all immigrants and bar those who sympathize with the Hamas terror group and other Islamist jihadist groups, as well as those who support the destruction of Israel.

Hamas terrorists earlier this month carried out the worst attack in Israel’s history, with over 1,500 gunmen breaking through the border barrier, murdering some 1,300 people, most of them civilians slaughtered in their homes or at an outdoor music festival, and kidnapping at least 199 people of all ages into the Strip. Israel has responded with a large-scale bombing campaign on Hamas targets in Gaza, aimed at toppling the terror group’s rule over the Palestinian enclave.

Trump’s proposals would mark a dramatic expansion of the controversial — and legally dubious — policies that drew alarm from immigrant rights and civil liberties activists in the US, but helped him win the GOP primary in 2016. Trump has long railed against the US taking immigrants from countries he has dubbed inferior, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, and told the crowd Monday that while he was president, the US stood up for Israel and “Judeo-Christian civilization and values.”

Trump also continued to paint himself as a martyr for his loyal supporters, railing against the four indictments he is facing along with a narrow gag order that was imposed Monday by the federal judge overseeing the 2020 election interference case against him in Washington. The order, which Trump has pledged to appeal, bars him from making statements targeting prosecutors, possible witnesses and court staff.

“I am willing to go to jail if that’s what it takes for our country to become a democracy again,” he said in Clive.

Trump pledged to bar the entry of refugees from Gaza fleeing Israel’s strikes as it seeks to destroy the Hamas terror group after its October 7 massacres, just as he tried to bar citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries during his first term with an executive order. The executive order, however, was met with fierce opposition and was fought all the way to the US Supreme Court. The high court eventually upheld a third version of the ban, which included travelers from North Korea and some from Venezuela.

Current and former members of communist and totalitarian parties and their sympathizers are already banned from entry into the US. But Trump told about 1,500 people in suburban Des Moines that if he wins a second term, the US would no longer allow what he called “dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots and maniacs to get residency in our country.”

“If you empathize with radical Islamic terrorists and extremists, you’re disqualified,” he said. “If you want to abolish the State of Israel, you’re disqualified. If you support Hamas or any ideology that’s having to do with that or any of the other really sick thoughts that go through people’s minds — very dangerous thoughts — you’re disqualified.”

The former president and GOP frontrunner also said he would aggressively deport resident aliens with “jihadist sympathies” and send immigration agents to “pro-jihadist demonstrations” to identify violators.

“In the wake of the attacks on Israel, Americans have been disgusted to see the open support for terrorists among the legions of foreign nationals on college campuses. They’re teaching your children hate,” he said. “Under the Trump administration, we will revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities and we will send them straight back home.”

Though Trump’s audience in the Horizon Events Center in Clive cheered his proposals, 31-year-old information technology specialist Ritu Bansal said she supported Trump but hoped he would also show compassion for the people of Gaza.

“In my opinion, the US government should care for the victims of the Hamas attack on Israel and the civilian victims in Gaza,” Bansal said. “The US can care for both.”

Trump has stepped up his caucus campaigning this fall as his team tries to lock in support to not only avoid a repeat of his 2016 second-place finish but to win an overwhelming victory that would deny momentum to whoever finishes in second place.

Earlier, Trump rallied caucusgoers in Iowa’s rural Dallas County, where he received the endorsement of the state’s attorney general and predicted a landslide victory three months before voting begins in the GOP contest’s kickoff state.

Brenna Bird, Iowa’s Republican attorney general, served previously as former Iowa Rep. Steve King’s chief of staff as well as an aide to former governor Terry Branstad and Governor Kim Reynolds. Last year, Bird beat longtime Democratic Attorney General Tom Miller.

By late Monday afternoon, Trump had campaigned before roughly 13,000 people in less than a month. Unlike his seat-of-the-pants campaign in 2016, Trump’s team is using the candidate’s celebrity to draw interested Republicans and track interest in supporting him in the leadoff caucuses set for January 15.

“Ninety-one days. Are you ready?” Trump asked more than 1,000 supporters packed into a livestock expo barn at the Dallas County fairgrounds in Adel. “We’re going to have a historic landslide,” Trump predicted as he stood flanked by giant bales of hay.

Trump’s advisers want to lock in a blowout that discourages talk of a second-place finisher consolidating support and taking on the former president directly.

After Trump’s second-place 2016 finish behind Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a ragtag effort of big crowds but little organization, state GOP staffers cleaned out his caucus campaign office to find thousands of signed pledge cards that had never been logged.

“I can promise you there is no backlog,” said Alex Latcham, a senior Trump adviser and early-state coordinator.