Foreign nationals whose visas the US State Department suspects assist Hamas or other designated terrorist organizations will have their visas revoked using artificial intelligence. According to top State Department sources cited by Axios, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is starting an AI-powered “Catch and Revoke” operation to search social media accounts belonging to student visa applicants.
The US government’s surveillance of foreign nationals’ speech and behavior has significantly increased as a result of this endeavor. In order to find possible terrorist sympathizers, tens of thousands of student visa holders’ social media profiles are reviewed with AI assistance.
Following the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023, officials will search social media posts for indications of purported terrorist sympathies. Internal databases will also be analyzed to find visa holders who were detained under the Biden administration but were allowed to remain in the nation. Authorities are also keeping an eye on news stories about anti-Israel protests and lawsuits filed by Jewish students against foreigners who are supposedly acting in an antisemitic manner without facing any repercussions.
The State Department is collaborating with the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice, Axios said. A senior official at the State Department referred to this as a “whole of government and whole of authority approach.”
The program began in October 2023 when federal authorities analyzed 100,000 students in the Student Exchange Visitor System to see whether any visas had been canceled because the student had been detained or suspended from school. After being informed of an arrest or suspension, the consular official who issued the visa usually makes the decision to revoke it. “We found literally zero visa revocations during the Biden administration, which suggests a blind eye attitude toward law enforcement,” said the official.
As a senator, Rubio stated eight days after October 7 that the Secretary of State has the power to cancel the visas of foreign nationals who are considered a threat under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.”We see people marching at our universities and in the streets of our country … calling for Intifada, celebrating what Hamas has done … Those people need to go,” Rubio stated.
Donald Trump, the former president, has said the same thing. A White House information document pertaining to an executive order that targets “pro-Hamas” and antisemitic conduct issued on January 30 cautioned: “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice. We will find you, and we will deport you.” Another executive order, announced on 20 January, targets visa holders and foreigners who “threaten our national security, espouse hateful ideology.”
Proponents contend that the measure calls into question the policing of free speech. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s chairman, Abed Ayoub, stated,”This should concern all Americans. This is a First Amendment and freedom of speech issue, and the administration will overplay its hand. Americans won’t like this. They’ll view this as capitulating free speech rights for a foreign nation.”
The “blueprint” of the project, according to Ayoub, can be linked to Operation Boulder in 1972, when the Nixon administration violated the rights of both foreigners and US citizens by infiltrating and monitoring pro-Palestinian organizations.”With the advent of AI, it’s even scarier because they’re policing speech and using faulty technology,” he added.
A senior State Department official defended the initiative, stating: “It would be negligent for the department that takes national security seriously to ignore publicly available information about [visa] applicants in terms of AI tools. … AI is one of the resources available to the government that’s very different from where we were technologically decades ago.”
A foreign national’s visa may be canceled if their social media posts seem to support the attack on Israel or exhibit “pro-Hamas” views.
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