State Dept. to Use AI to Revoke Visas of Foreign Students Who Appear “Pro-Hamas”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is launching an AI-fueled “Catch and Revoke” effort to cancel the visas of foreign nationals who appear to support Hamas or other designated terror groups, senior State Department officials tell Axios.

Why it matters: The effort — which includes AI-assisted reviews of tens of thousands of student visa holders’ social media accounts — marks a dramatic escalation in the U.S. government’s policing of foreign nationals’ conduct and speech.

• The reviews of social media accounts are particularly looking for evidence of alleged terrorist sympathies expressed after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, officials say.

Officials plan to examine internal databases to see whether any visa holders were arrested but allowed to stay in the country during the Biden administration.

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Zoom out: The Immigration Nationality Act of 1952 gives the secretary of state the authority to revoke visas from foreigners deemed to be a threat —a point Rubio made as a senator eight days after Oct. 7.

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• Trump echoed the same sentiments in a Jan. 30 White House fact sheet tied to an executive order aimed at antisemitism at “pro-Hamas” activity: “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, issued Jan. 20, targets visa holders and foreigners who “threaten our national security, espouse hateful ideology.”

The big picture: The cumulative effect of Trump’s executive orders is already having a chilling effect on student visa-holders. They’re starting to shy away from protests critical of Israel.

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The senior State Department official, however, said that “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.”

• If officials find a social media post from a foreign national that appears to endorse the attack on Israel and looks “pro-Hamas,” the official said, that could be grounds for visa revocation.
• “Under President Trump, the Immigration Nationality Act is great again,” the official added.

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