By Sharon Zhang / Truthout
The Trump administration has put a pause on new student visa application interviews as it prepares to expand its surveillance of the social media activity of those seeking to study in the U.S., Politico reports, in the latest instance of the administration’s crackdown on immigrants and the left.
The expected new guidance was announced to U.S. embassies and consulates in a cable sent Tuesday and signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Politico reported.
“Effective immediately, in preparation for an expansion of required social media screening and vetting, consular sections should not add any additional student or exchange visitor (F, M, and J) visa appointment capacity until further guidance is issued [in a separate telegram], which we anticipate in the coming days,” the cable says.
The outlet reports that the cable doesn’t contain explicit vetting conditions, but references President Donald Trump’s executive orders on combating antisemitism and terrorism that have been cited by administration officials in their mission to quash dissent from pro-Palestine and left-wing advocates.
The administration is already conducting social media searches for students seeking visas or residency in the U.S., but Politico reports that those efforts have largely targeted students with a history of pro-Palestine protest.
The new guidance will expand those efforts, representing a dire crackdown on free speech that has been likened to a new McCarthyism; many commentators have also noted the similarities between the administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestine speech and the efforts to widen the crackdown to anyone on the left, as laid out in the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther.
Politico writes that many State Department employees complain that the guidance for existing social media vetting efforts have been vague. “It’s unclear, for example, whether posting photos of a Palestinian flag on an X account could force a student to undergo additional scrutiny,” the outlet wrote.
The expansion of efforts comes as the administration has lost several battles in court to continue imprisoning student advocates for Palestinian rights, like Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi and Badar Khan Suri — though Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil remains imprisoned, despite the seemingly increasingly shaky case against him.
In the separate cases of Öztürk, Mahdawi and Suri, judges had individually ruled that immigration officials had trampled on the students’ fundamental rights to free speech and due process in imprisoning them.
However, social media vetting for visa applicants has a robust infrastructure, first built during the Obama administration, despite the chilling effect that such restrictions could have on free speech and due process rights.
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Sharon Zhang
Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor. Before coming to Truthout, Sharon had written stories for Pacific Standard, The New Republic, and more. She has a master’s degree in environmental studies. She can be found on Twitter: @zhang_sharon.
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