President Donald Trump has found a new tool to help make good on his promise to deliver the largest mass deportation in U.S. history: the American flag.
The president signed an executive order Monday mandating the prosecution of individuals accused of burning or otherwise desecrating the American flag, Fox News Digital first reported.
The order appears to double as one that furthers the president’s own interests, such as his brazen mass deportation efforts.
While signing the order in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump claimed—without providing evidence—that “All over the country, their burning flags. All over the world, they burn the American flag.” He added that, “When you burn the American flag, it incites riots. At levels we’ve never seen before. People go crazy.”
The directive instructs the attorney general and secretary of homeland security to deny, prohibit, terminate, or revoke visas and other immigration benefits for non-citizens “wherever there has been an appropriate determination that flag desecration by foreign nationals permits the exercise of those remedies under applicable law,” according to Fox.
The order also instructs the attorney general to pursue charges against those who violate laws “in ways that involve desecrating the flag” while also seeking to broaden the definition of “desecration” beyond burning—testing the limits of what the Supreme Court has previously ruled protected under the First Amendment.
Ultimately, the new order could translate to the Trump administration deporting or jailing protestors, who for decades have used upside-down, burning, or painted-over flags in political demonstrations, including ones that have taken place in cities across the country since the president retook office in January.
Attorney General Pam Bondi is also tasked with referring state or local flag desecration cases to federal authorities.
“President Trump will not allow the American Flag—a special symbol of our country’s greatness—to be used as a tool to incite violence and riots that jeopardize the safety of everyday Americans," White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers wrote in a statement to the Daily Beast. “President Trump will always protect the First Amendment, while simultaneously implementing common-sense, tough-on-crime policies to prevent violence and chaos.”
“The American flag is the most sacred and cherished symbol of the United States of America, and desecrating it is uniquely and inherently offensive and provocative,” a fact sheet provided to Fox News reads. “It is a statement of contempt and hostility toward our Nation, and an act used by groups of foreign nationals calculated to intimidate and threaten violence against Americans.”
Trump’s move comes just months after he attempted to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelan migrants. Several judges have attempted to block Trump’s usage of the act, which has been used only three times in U.S. history. It’s an archaic law that allows for summary deportations of individuals from countries at war with the United States.
Trump has long advocated retaliation against flag-burning—a contentious form of political protest. In 2016, while campaigning for president, he proposed jail time or even loss of citizenship for burning the American flag, CNN reported.
Trump revisited the issue during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, calling flag desecration a “disgrace,” and pledging support for an anti-flag-burning statute.
Flag-burning rose to prominence as a form of protest during the Vietnam War, prompting many states to pass laws criminalizing desecration. Those laws were later struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional, according to the ACLU.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
