US reportedly considers granting asylum to Jewish people from UK | Trump administration
It is reported that discussions are continuing within the Donald Trump administration regarding the possibility of the USA granting asylum to Jews in the UK. Telegramreferring to the US president’s personal lawyer.
Trump’s lawyer, Robert Garson, told the newspaper that he was in talks with the US State Department about offering asylum to British Jews who left the UK due to rising anti-Semitism.
The White House did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
Garson, 49, said he felt Britain was “no longer a safe place for Jews”. He added that recent events such as the Islamist attack on a synagogue in Manchester and what he described as widespread antisemitism following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, led him to believe that British Jews should be given the option of asylum in the US.
Some supporters of Israel in the UK have staged mass demonstrations here against Israel’s anti-Semitism-motivated response to the 2023 attack on Gaza in which tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians were killed.
One US television interview In late 2023, Garson called protesters in New York and Los Angeles opposing the Israeli response “marauding mobs” and accused them of “disguising themselves as protesters and chanting anti-Semitic slogans screaming for Jewish blood.”
In a new interview with the Telegraph, Garson said he saw “no future” for Jews in the UK and placed much of the blame on British prime minister Keir Starmer, accusing him of allowing antisemitism to grow.
Garson, a former British lawyer who practiced in London before moving to the US in 2008, told the Telegraph: “The UK is no longer a safe place for Jews. I have spoken to the foreign office about whether the president should give British Jews asylum in the US.”
He said such an offer was attractive because it was a “highly educated community.” “It’s a population that is native English speaking, educated, and not highly delinquent,” Garson said.
He added: “When I look at what’s going on with Jews in the UK and I look at the changing demographics, I don’t believe there is a future for Jews in the UK, and I’ve discussed that with people in the Trump administration.
“From my perspective, this is particularly sad.”
Garson said he raised the idea of the United States serving as a haven for British Jews with Yehuda Kaploun, Trump’s special envoy charged with monitoring and combating antisemitism as a board member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. Trump appointed Garson to the council in May after dismissing board members appointed during Joe Biden’s presidency.
Trump had previously hired Garson to pursue a $50 million lawsuit against investigative journalist Bob Woodward. dismissed.
A 2025 survey conducted by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research found that the sense of security in the UK’s Jewish community has fallen sharply in recent years. 35 per cent of Jews felt unsafe in Britain in 2025, up from 9 per cent in 2023 before protests in Britain against Hamas attacks and Israel’s attack on Gaza.
Perceptions of antisemitism also intensified; 47% of British Jews saw it as a “very big” problem; this rate was only 11% in 2012.
In October, the Trump administration announced that it planned to limit the number of refugees it accepts to the United States in 2026 to only 7,500, and that these spots would be reserved mostly for white South Africans. It was not yet clear how this figure would be affected by British Jews if the US granted them asylum.
