USCIS to Screen Immigrants’ Social Media for ‘Antisemitism’ (1)

US Citizenship and Immigration Services will screen social media platforms for antisemitic speech as grounds to deny immigration benefits, the agency announced.

The new policy will take effect immediately, the agency said Wednesday, and will apply to apply to green card applicants as well as international students.

USCIS will look specifically for demonstrations of support for groups including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, or the Houthi movement in Yemen. It will consider social media content that indicates, espouses, or endorses “antisemitic activity” as a factor in discretionary analysis in adjudicating immigration benefits.

The new policy comes weeks after USCIS announced plans to begin requiring applicants to disclose social media profiles when seeking benefits like permanent residency and asylum. Immigration and privacy advocates have said those plans raise major First Amendment concerns. Litigation challenging similar requirements for visa applicants is ongoing.

The State Department has reportedly launched an initiative using artificial intelligence to revoke visas based on social media posts supporting Hamas.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has made it clear that individuals cannot “hide behind the First Amendment to advocate for anti-Semitic violence and terrorism,” said DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin

“There is no room in the United States for the rest of the world’s terrorist sympathizers, and we are under no obligation to admit them or let them stay here,” McLaughlin said in a statement.

Civil liberties advocates raised concerns about an absence of standards in the new policy and the effect it would have on free speech.

Surveillance of protected speech shows the Trump administration is trading the country’s commitment to free and open discourse for fear and silence, said Nico Perrino, executive vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

“Unfortunately, that chill appears to be the administration’s aim,” he said.

Granting immigration benefits only to applicants who share the administration’s viewpoints violates the First Amendment, said Esha Bhandari, deputy directory of the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. She added that USCIS has announced no guardrails for review of social media and there’s no reason to believe it will stop at filtering for what it deems to be antisemitism.

“By announcing such a vague and overbroad policy, the government will cause millions of people living lawfully in the country to self-censor and avoid contributing to contentious political debates,” Bhandari said in a statement to Bloomberg Law. “The government has many tools at its disposal to combat antisemitism that don’t require violating constitutional rights.”