Trump lawyer claims US may grant asylum to UK Jews, though no such plan seems in the works

US President Donald Trump’s administration might be considering granting asylum to British Jews, Trump’s personal lawyer has said, alleging that “the UK is no longer a safe place for Jews.”

Robert Garson, a Jewish attorney from Manchester, England, with rising influence in the Trump administration, said he proposed the move to the State Department, speaking to The Telegraph in an interview published on Sunday. Garson said his proposal was well received despite the Trump administration’s general anti-immigration stance.

“I have spoken to the State Department as to whether the president should be offering British Jews asylum in the US,” he said.

The US State Department did not respond to a request for comment on the interview, and the administration has given no indication of any plan to grant refugee status to British Jews.

“I thought: Jews are being persecuted in the United Kingdom,” Garson said. “They fit a wonderful demographic for the United States. They are, on the whole, educated. They speak English natively. They’ve got businesses. They’re exactly the sort of immigrant the United States should want to attract. So, why not?”

Garson said his views on the future of Jews in Britain hardened after the terror attack on a synagogue in his hometown last year. Two people were killed at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester on Yom Kippur after a man rammed his car into a crowd of people and stabbed others.

In October, the White House announced that it would restrict the number of refugees admitted to the United States in 2026 to 7,500, mostly reserving those spots for white South Africans. The number represents a steep drop from former president Joe Biden’s ceiling of 125,000 in 2024.

The current administration’s privileging of white South Africans has been widely criticized in South Africa, including by Jews. The country’s chief rabbi, Warren Goldstein, otherwise a vocal Trump supporter, called the move a “mistake.”

Garson was hired by Trump in 2022 to sue investigative journalist Bob Woodward for $50 million over Woodward’s publication of Trump interviews in an audiobook. (The lawsuit was dismissed in July.) The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., has also hired Garson as a lawyer for his publishing house, Winning Team Publishing, which has published the president, Charlie Kirk and other prominent conservatives.

Garson’s rise continued with an appointment to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council in May. He was among several Trump allies that the president named to replace members appointed by Biden, including Doug Emhoff, the Jewish husband of former vice president Kamala Harris.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at the time: “President Trump looks forward to appointing new individuals who will not only continue to honor the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust, but who are also steadfast supporters of the State of Israel.”

Garson moved to New York in 2008 and now lives in Florida, where he is the head of armed security at his synagogue. After the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, Garson became a National Rifle Association-licensed instructor and has offered to train any Jews who are interested.

He believes that “if there had been 6 million guns in 6 million Jewish hands, there would have been 6 million fewer deaths” in the Holocaust, he told The Telegraph.

Garson laid much of the blame for dangers to British Jews at the foot of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, saying that he “allowed rampant antisemitism to become commonplace in society and has allowed it to come from those who really don’t have Britain’s best interests at heart.”

Garson has expressed particular concern about the influence of Muslim immigrants in England, charging that non-Jewish British citizens would also soon face “sharia-compliant areas.” He said, “They are coming for the Jews and then they are coming for your pubs.”

Some British Jewish groups have rejected the idea that British Jews would seek to leave for the United States. The Community Security Trust, an antisemitism watchdog, told Haaretz that “Jews were murdered by hateful terrorists in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom” last year, so there is no refuge to be found there.

David Aaronovitch, a British journalist and broadcaster, also rebuked Garson’s proposal in a Jewish News op-ed addressed to Trump.

“British Jews wouldn’t be safer in the US, simply because no one is,” said Aaronovitch. “The homicide rate in your country is six times what it is here; in fact, in Mr Garson’s new domicile, Miami-Dade County, it’s over 20 times the rate here in London.”

He also noted the debate in Trump’s own party over its inclusion of avowed antisemites such as Nick Fuentes.

“It hasn’t escaped the notice of many British Jews that some of the most vocal and influential new media supporters of your administration have either given themselves over to overt, old-style antisemitism or have shown themselves happy to tolerate others who have,” said Aaronovitch.

In Israel, Immigration Minister Ofir Sofer also responded dismissively to the idea that British Jews should leave for the United States. “The home of British Jewry, and of Jews around the world, is the State of Israel,” he said.