Texas State Troopers Deployed to Pro-Palestinian College Protest

Texas state troopers descended on a crowd of pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Texas at Austin campus on Wednesday afternoon.

In an Instagram post, the Palestine Solidarity Committee, an organization “dedicated to organizing for Palestinian liberation and right to return,” with a location in Austin, posted its plans to establish “the Popular University” at the UT Austin campus on Wednesday.

According to the post, supporters were going to “reclaim our space” by walking out of class at 11:40 a.m. and meeting at the Greg Plaza. Students were instructed to then march to occupy the lawn. They were told to bring blankets, food, face masks and energy.

The effort was to urge UT Austin to “divest from death” and follows similar protests that have occurred at Columbia University in New York City. More than 100 pro-Palestinian student demonstrators have camped out on Columbia’s main lawn to protest the war and demand their school divest from companies with ties to Israel.

However, during the Wednesday demonstration in Texas, UT Austin police and Texas State Police quickly arrived on the scene and blocked the students’ path to the lawn, The Daily Texan posted on X (formerly Twitter), with a video of law enforcement arriving there.

“Roughly 50 state troopers in riot gear have arrived, seven of which are on horseback,” The Daily Texan posted.

Newsweek reached out to Texas State Police and Governor Greg Abbott’s press office by email for comment.

The protest at UT Texas Austin comes days after Abbott posted on X about the protests at Ivy League universities like Columbia.

“Ivy League universities are showing that their time has passed,” Abbott wrote “They are little more than monuments of our past. Now they are accomplices of the chaos they helped to sow.”

Protests have been occurring on college campuses since Israel launched its war in Gaza following Hamas’ October 7 attack, which killed about 1,200 people and left about 250 others taken hostage. Since then, Israel has killed at least 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children, the Associated Press has reported, citing local health officials.

Houston has become a hot spot for pro-Palestinian protests, with some protests seeing success in canceling some public-speaking engagements involving Israeli speakers and Jewish sympathizers.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.