Trump connected his travel ban to the Boulder attack. Some Jews object.

When President Donald Trump announced a plan to bar citizens from 12 countries late Wednesday, he started by noting a recent attack on the Jewish community that was allegedly committed by an Egyptian man who had overstayed his tourist visa.

The attack in Boulder, Colorado, which left 15 injured, “underscores the danger posed to our country by foreign nationals not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their welcome,” Trump said in a video released by the White House on Wednesday evening. “We don’t want ’em.”

While some Jewish leaders have praised Trump’s recent efforts to address rising antisemitism, others say attempting to connect immigration policy with an attack on their community dilutes their deep concerns about the hostility they face from some quarters.

“Jews are not asking for this. This is not what Jews need or what keeps us safe,” Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the largest denomination of Judaism in North America, said of the travel ban.

“It’s not a moment to talk about immigration policy,” said Brandon Rattiner, senior director for Colorado’s Jewish Community Relations Council.

“What we need to be talking about, and what this attack [in Boulder] honestly has always been about, is the way Jews are used to score political points when it’s convenient,” Rattiner said, “and that inevitably blows back on us as we saw this past weekend.”

The travel ban is not specifically meant to address the Boulder attack, said a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer insight into the deliberations. But the incident underscores the need for more vetting of people entering the country, the official said.

“President Trump has done more to combat antisemitism than any President in history,” said White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson. Trump has marshalled federal resources to address antisemitism on college campuses, began a multiagency task force to combat antisemitism and held “radical criminals accountable who target Jewish Americans,” she said.

The Trump administration has repeatedly cited antisemitism as it slashes funding to elite universities and deports foreign students it accuses of antisemitism. In April, for example, Trump administration declared that “harassment of Jewish students is intolerable” and suspended billions in grants to Harvard University.

Some Jewish leaders have welcomed those steps by the administration.

“President Trump’s efforts to combat antisemitism are unparalleled and are genuinely appreciated by most in the Jewish community,” said Gabe Groisman, an advisory board member of Combat Antisemitism Movement, a network of groups. Administration officials’ response to the Boulder attack “shows their consistent commitment to these values and this cause, despite all of the noise and roadblocks being placed by those dead set to oppose anything done by this administration.”

There are many Jews who are angry at universities for allowing pro-Palestinian protests that left some Jewish students feeling unsafe, said Ronald Halber, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington. “I know that a lot of people don’t mind seeing the universities squirm awhile. For a year, America’s universities and college failed them,” he said. Halber added that “most American Jews do not feel defunding higher education is the proper way to combat campus antisemitism.”

Thirty-five percent of Jewish college students said in a 2024 survey by the American Jewish Committee they had experienced antisemitism during their time in college or university. The survey found that three-quarters of U.S. Jews said they feel less safe “as a Jewish person” since the 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.

But using the Boulder attack as the rationale for the travel ban could make things worse, Halber said. “Don’t use antisemitism as an excuse to introduce controversial policies. We’re not here to be used by anybody,” he said. “It can whip up antisemitism.”

Some Jewish leaders say they worry Trump is politicizing the fight against antisemitism to promote his agenda. Some have also said Trump shares some of the blame for the more hostile climate they have faced since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded Israel, setting off the ongoing Israel-Gaza war.

The attack in Boulder is part of what groups that track hate crimes say is rising antisemitism since Oct. 7.

In April, the residence of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, was set on fire, and the suspect allegedly blamed him for Middle East violence against Palestinians. A month later, two Israeli Embassy employees were fatally shot as they left a reception at a Jewish museum in D.C. That suspect allegedly yelled “Free, free Palestine.”

And on Sunday, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, allegedly used a flame thrower to attack a Jewish event in Boulder.

Police received a report that a “white male, wearing no shirt” was throwing molotov cocktails at people, according the arrest warrant filed for Soliman’s arrest. He allegedly told authorities he planned the attack for a year but was waiting for his oldest daughter to graduate from high school before moving forward. He used molotov cocktails, which he learned to make by watching YouTube, after he couldn’t buy a gun because he wasn’t a citizen, according to the warrant.

Soliman was born in Egypt and lived in Kuwait for 17 years before moving to Colorado Springs three years ago, according to the arrest warrant.

He entered the United States on a B-2 tourist visa in August 2022, according to the Department of Homeland Security. He applied for asylum in September 2022, and his visa expired in February 2023.

Boulder prosecutors announced Thursday that they had filed 118 state charges, including attempted murder and assault, against Soliman. Three victims remain in the hospital, said Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougherty.

The ban, slated to go into effect June 9, restricts the entry of travelers to the United States from Afghanistan, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. It also partially restricts the entry of travelers from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

Egypt isn’t among the primarily African and the Middle Eastern countries included in the ban.

Instead of a travel ban, Jewish Americans want grants cut by the Trump administration to secure Jewish facilities restored, said Rattiner, of Colorado’s Jewish Community Relations Council. “We’ve asked folks to stop using our community and, by the way, the Palestinian community, to [aid] their political goals,” Rattiner said.

Most Jews and leading Jewish groups in the United States have historically supported immigration - and stood against Trump’s first travel ban, said Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a research group about world Jewish life and pluralism. “Now the administration recognizes the Jewish community is scared, and can use that fear,” he said.

The administration “has found a lane through fighting antisemitism that allows them to make it [the travel ban] into a noble position instead of a very extreme public policy position,” Kurtzer said.

The travel ban also endangers Jews still under threat in Iran, said Rachel Sumekh, an Iranian Jewish activist and philanthropic adviser who lives in a Persian Jewish community in Los Angeles. “We’re concerned because this is very much life or death for a lot of people who are on those lists right now,” she said.

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Carolyn Y. Johnson contributed to this report from Boulder.