Trump administration discussed offering sanctuary to Jews in UK: Report
The US is considering granting asylum to British Jews, according to a report published by The Telegraph on Sunday.
President Donald Trump’s personnel lawyer, Robert Garson, told the British newspaper that he had been in talks with the State Department about providing sanctuary for Jews fleeing antisemitism in the UK.
Garson, who is Jewish and was born in Manchester, said the UK was “no longer a safe place for Jews” and he saw “no future” for them there.
In October 2025, two British Jews were killed at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Manchester in an antisemitic attack.
“It is certainly not an unattractive proposition. It is a highly educated community. I have spoken to people in the State Department and I have mentioned it in my role on the Holocaust Museum board,” he said.
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Garson represented Trump in a $50m lawsuit the US president had filed against US journalist Bob Woodward. The former UK barrister has also represented Donald Trump Jr.
Garson was appointed as a board member of the US Holocaust Memorial Council in May last year. He said he has had close discussions on the idea with Trump’s antisemitism czar, Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun.
Kaploun, an influential Zionist, has long equated criticism of the state of Israel with hatred of the Jewish faith, and he has called for crackdowns on free speech over criticism of the state of Israel.
Kaploun, who is based in Florida, is close to US-Israeli lobbyist Miriam Adelson.
Rising Islamophobia
While antisemitism has risen in the UK, it has coincided with a surge in Islamophobia.
Anger at Israel has intensified over its offensive on Gaza, which has killed over 71,500 people. The United Nations, human rights experts and many genocide scholars have recognised Israel’s war as a genocide.
It’s not clear how advanced the discussions are about facilitating the emigration of Jews from the UK. If the Trump administration does follow through on the idea, it would come at a time when it is curbing immigration from dozens of other countries.
The Trump administration recently announced that it would suspend the issuance of immigrant visas to the nationals of 75 countries. Many on the list are Muslim-majority countries, such as Tunisia, Pakistan, Kuwait, and Morocco. But others are European and predominantly Eastern Christian, such as North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Moldova. Russia and Brazil are also on the list.
However, the Trump administration has singled out some ethnic and religious groups for immigration that resonate with his base.
Trump essentially halted refugee arrivals after taking office in January, but has been making an exception for white South Africans, whom the administration says are being persecuted. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and a delegation of white South Africans who visited Trump in the Oval Office earlier this year denied the allegation of a "white genocide" as baseless.
The International Refugee Assistance Project told Middle East Eye, for an earlier article, that the number of approved and vetted refugees who had "confirmed travel plans" to resettle in the US before the Trump administration's suspension is larger than the "entire refugee program this year".
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