Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered diplomats to search social media from visa applicants in an effort to prevent people suspected of criticizing the U.S. and Israel from entering the country, according to a report from The New York Times.
It said Rubio included instructions for these overseas officials in a cable sent last Tuesday and he ordered the directive to begin immediately. With the new instructions, consular officers are expected to refer certain student and exchange visitor visa applicants to a “fraud prevention unit” for a “mandatory social media check,” said the Times, citing two American officials with knowledge of the cable.
“The cable described the broad parameters that diplomats should use to judge whether to deny a visa,” per the report. Additionally, it referenced remarks Rubio made last month in an interview with CBS News.
“We don’t want people in our country that are going to be committing crimes and undermining our national security or the public safety,” said Rubio. “It’s that simple, especially people that are here as guests. That is what a visa is.”
President Donald Trump has issued executive orders calling for crackdowns on both immigration into the U.S. and anti-Semitism already in the initial months of his term. The Times noted that Rubio’s cable comes nine weeks after Trump signed executive orders to start a campaign to deport some foreign citizens, including those who might have “hostile attitudes” toward America.
In 2019, during his first term in office, Trump issued Executive Order 13899 to combat anti-Semitism. He issued another order in January to expand on that previous action.
“President Trump’s new Order takes forceful and unprecedented steps to marshal all Federal resources to combat the explosion of anti-Semitism on our campuses and in our streets since October 7, 2023,” said the order, referring to Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas’ large scale attack on Israel. That attack kicked off the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Some experts have called for the situation to be called a genocide against the Palestinian people.
Trump’s order also said that: “Immediate action will be taken by the Department of Justice to protect law and order, quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities,” and that the order demands resident aliens who violate laws to be removed from the country.
Last month, the story of Tufts doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk getting arrested and having her visa revoked made headlines. This week, The Tufts Daily said that “the revocation of Öztürk’s visa seems to be based on her coauthoring of an op-ed published in the Daily, according to her legal counsel.”
In an op-ed published last March, Öztürk and others wrote about Tufts Community Union Senate resolutions “demanding that the university acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.”
That outlet also said Öztürk was held for an almost 24-hour period following her arrest last week, during which her location was unknown and her lawyer was unable to contact her. Furthermore, it said ICE’s Online Detainee Locator System did not indicate where Öztürk was being held. Later it reflected that she was at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center as of last Wednesday evening.
“Rümeysa Öztürk’s experience is shocking, cruel, and unconstitutional. For nearly 24 hours, we could not locate her, and despite a court order to prevent the government from taking her out of Massachusetts, we finally learned the Trump administration had shipped her to Louisiana,” said Mahsa Khanbabai, attorney at Khanbabai Immigration Law, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. “Criticizing U.S. foreign policy and human rights violations is neither illegal nor grounds for detention. The government must immediately release Rümeysa to continue her studies and rejoin her community.”
When making media comments last week, Rubio said that he doesn’t “understand what people don’t get,” about visas. He said “a visa is a gift” and that “no one is entitled to a visa.”
Rubio was specifically asked about the Tufts University story and he said that “If they seek to self-deport they can do that, because that’s what we’ve done. We’re basically asking them to leave the country. That’s why they’ve been detained. They can do so tomorrow. Buy an airplane ticket and leave. No problem.”
Rubio said that he is also “taking steps to impose additional visa restrictions on Chinese officials determined to be substantially involved in the formulation or execution of policies related to access for foreigners to Tibetan Areas, pursuant to the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act of 2018,” in a press release issued this week.