The US state department will use artificial intelligence to revoke visas of foreign students who it perceives as supporters of Hamas, Axios reported on Thursday, citing senior state department officials.
Donald Trump signed an executive order in January to combat antisemitism and has pledged to deport non-citizen college students and others who took part in pro-Palestinian protests that have been ongoing for months amid Israel’s military assault on Gaza after Hamas’s October 2023 attack.
The AI-fueled “catch and revoke” effort will include AI-assisted reviews of tens of thousands of student visa holders’ social media accounts, Axios reported. Officials will also check news reports of previous demonstrations against Israel’s policies and Jewish students’ lawsuits highlighting foreign nationals allegedly engaging in antisemitism.
Some pro-Palestinian groups are Jewish themselves and many protesters have denounced antisemitism and Hamas. However, there have been incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia in pro-Palestinian protests and pro-Israeli counter-protests.
Advocates worry that using artificial intelligence for surveillance could lead to errors, misidentifications and privacy violations.
“This should concern all Americans. This is a first amendment and freedom of speech issue and the administration will overplay its hand,” said Abed Ayoub, the executive director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. “Americans won’t like this. They’ll view this as capitulating free speech rights for a foreign nation.”
The state department is working with the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, according to Axios. The three departments had no immediate comment.
Trump has said he will stop federal funding for educational institutions that allow what he called illegal protests.
“Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or ... arrested,” Trump said on Tuesday.
The US constitution’s first amendment protects freedom of speech and assembly. Rights advocates have condemned Trump’s rhetoric towards protesters.
On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union published an open letter urging colleges and universities to not bow to federal pressure to use surveillance or punish international students or faculty if they were involved in any campus protests. The group said the protests were constitutionally protected free speech.
“It is disturbing to see the White House threatening freedom of speech and academic freedom on US college campuses so blatantly,” said Cecillia Wang, legal director of the ACLU and co-author of the letter. “Trump’s latest coercion campaign, attempting to turn university administrators against their own students and faculty, harkens back to the McCarthy era and is at odds with American constitutional values and the basic mission of universities.”
Washington has designated Hamas as a “foreign terrorist organization”. The Islamist group’s 7 October 2023 attack killed 1,200 people, with more than 250 taken as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza authorities. It has internally displaced nearly everyone there and led to accusations of genocide and war crimes that Israel denies.
