The Trump administration is weighing the possibility of offering asylum to Jews in the United Kingdom amid rising antisemitism, according to comments made to The Telegraph.
Robert Garson, personal lawyer to President Donald Trump and a Manchester-born former UK barrister, revealed that he has held discussions with the US State Department about providing sanctuary for British Jews seeking to escape what he described as an increasingly hostile environment.
Garson told The Telegraph that the UK is “no longer a safe place for Jews," citing the Islamist attack on a Manchester synagogue and the surge in antisemitism following the October 7 Hamas massacre in Israel. He said these developments led him to conclude that British Jews should be offered refuge in the United States.
In the interview, Garson said he sees “no future" for Jews in the UK and attributed much of the blame to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whom he accused of allowing antisemitism to flourish.
Garson, appointed last May by President Trump to the US Holocaust Memorial Council after the removal of Biden-era appointees, said he raised the idea of asylum with Trump’s antisemitism envoy, Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun.
Garson, 49, has become increasingly influential within Trump’s circle. He is currently representing the president in a $50 million legal claim against journalist Bob Woodward. He also serves as legal counsel to Donald Trump Jr. for Winning Team Publishing, which has released books by conservative authors, the president, and Charlie Kirk, the assassinated Right-wing activist.
Garson, who moved to the US in 2008, reiterated his concerns: “The UK is no longer a safe place for Jews. I have spoken to the State Department as to whether the president should be offering British Jews asylum in the US. It is certainly not an unattractive proposition. It is a highly educated community… It is a populous that speaks English natively, that is educated and doesn’t have a high proportion of criminals. There were conversations."
He added that demographic changes and rising hostility toward Jews have convinced him that “there is a future for Jews in the United Kingdom" no longer. “For me, that is particularly sad," he said.
Garson sharply criticized the Crown Prosecution Service for failing to prosecute protesters “on the streets of Britain who had glorified in the rape or death of Jews" after the October 7 attacks. He argued that there is “a lack of political will" to enforce the Public Order Act against anti-Israel demonstrators.
“Keir Starmer has turned a total blind eye to antisemitism," he charged. “The Prime Minister has 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."
He warned that parts of Britain could fall under Sharia law if fundamentalist Islamism continues unchecked. “Mark my words, they are coming for the Jews and then they are coming for your pubs. You are going to have sharia-compliant areas very, very soon," he said.