Trump administration monitors social media of student visa holders for pro-Palestine activism
A new leaked document has revealed that the administration of US President Donald Trump has required the monitoring of the social media accounts of foreign students studying in, or seeking to study in the United States, to obtain a visa amid an ongoing crackdown on pro-Palestinian student activism in the country.
Ken Klippenstein, an investigative American journalist, citing a “sensitive” State Department directive issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, reported on Saturday that it will be “mandatory” for consular officers and State Department personnel to comprehensively review and screen every student visa applicants for any evidence of “terrorist connections”.
Such connections are defined broadly to include “advocating for, sympathizing with, or persuading others to endorse or espouse terrorist activities or support” a terrorist organization, Klippenstein added.
The investigative journalist further noted that the order to conduct a “social media review” — including screenshotting posts — of new and returning student visa applicants appears directed at Palestinian and other foreign students who are “sympathetic” to the resistance movement Hamas.
However, it also opens the door for broader ideological vetting, and directing the social media of visa applicants to be assessed for “potential security and non-security related ineligibilities [that] pose a threat to US national security.”
The directive, dated March 25, which bears the subject line “Enhanced Screening and Social Media Vetting for Visa Applicants;” includes “measures to combat anti-Semitism” as well as combating “foreign terrorists and other national security threats to public safety”.
The order requires visa decision-makers to take screenshots of “potentially derogatory information” to both document their decisions and to prevent visa applicants and holders from deleting or altering their previous posts.
What social media is reviewed and how that is done is governed by the State Department Foreign Affairs Handbook section 7 FAH-1 H-954.4, which has not been released to the public, Klippenstein said.
In late January, Trump signed an executive order, pledging to deport foreign students who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests.
He claimed that pro-Palestinian campus protests had unleashed an “unprecedented wave of vile anti-Semitic discrimination, vandalism, and violence against our citizens, especially in our schools and on our campuses.”
In recent weeks, the State Department has moved to deport several students at Columbia University with visas over alleged “pro-Hamas” sentiment.
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