Inside the DHS task force scouring foreign students' social media
The task force is looking for grounds to revoke visas of foreign students studying in the U.S.
A recently created Department of Homeland Security task force is using data analytic tools to scour the social media histories of the estimated 1.5 million foreign students studying in the United States for potential grounds to revoke their visas, three sources familiar with the operation told NBC News. They said records are also being searched for charges or criminal convictions of the student visa holders.
DHS officials also announced Wednesday that the department would begin considering what it deems to be antisemitic activity on social media and “physical harassment of Jewish individuals” as grounds to revoke or deny immigration benefits.
“This will immediately affect aliens applying for lawful permanent resident status, foreign students and aliens affiliated with educational institutions linked to antisemitic activity,” the announcement said.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, said the new policy was a return to “McCarthyism,” referring to the tactics used to identify alleged communists in the Cold War that violated privacy rights.
“The spirit of Joseph McCarthy is alive and well in the Trump administration, which has spent months dishonestly mischaracterizing legitimate criticism of the Israeli government’s war crimes in Gaza as antisemitic, pursuing witch hunts into American colleges, and threatening the free speech rights of immigrants,” CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said in a statement Wednesday.
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