State Department to ramp up screening, social media vetting for student visa applicants as interviews paused

The State Department is readying to bolster its efforts to vet and surface the societal media of those applying for planetary pupil and speech visitant visas to guarantee applicants don’t airs a nationalist information menace to the U.S., Fox News Digital has learned. 

To bash this, the State Department is temporarily suspending caller pupil and speech visitant visa interviews arsenic it evaluates enhanced societal media screenings for the exertion process. 

The effort is the latest inaugural from the Trump medication to ace down connected migration and revoke visas of those attending world institutions successful the U.S. Those who’ve publically supported Palestine person faced accrued scrutiny, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said successful May that the medication was reviewing the visa presumption of students who participated successful pro-Palestine protests. 

The Trump medication has accused students who’ve participated successful these protests of supporting Hamas — a designated overseas violent organization. 

The State Department is presently examining existing operations that spell into screening and vetting pupil and speech visa applications, and "based connected that review, plans to contented guidance connected expanded societal media vetting for each specified applicants," according to a Tuesday email obtained by Fox News Digital. 

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio said successful May that the medication was reviewing the visa presumption of students who participated successful pro-Palestine protests.  (Jose Luis Magana/The Associated Press )

As a result, the State Department is instructing consular sections to intermission adding immoderate additional student oregon speech visitant visa assignment capableness until further guidance is issued, "in mentation for an enlargement of required societal media screening and vetting," the email said. 

"The adjacent measurement is for posts to measure operations and processes successful mentation for this expanded societal media vetting of each pupil and speech visitant (F, M, J) visa applicants," said the email.

"Appointments already scheduled tin proceed nether existent guidelines," the email said. "However, appointments that are available, but not taken arsenic of the merchandise of this cable, should beryllium instantly removed from availability." 

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The State Department is instructing consular sections to intermission adding immoderate additional student oregon speech visitant visa assignment capableness until further guidance is issued, "in mentation for an enlargement of required societal media screening and vetting," the email said.  (Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency)

The email does not specify what further steps would beryllium progressive successful the much stringent societal media screening process, but says that consular offices person been instructed to notation definite pupil and speech visitant visa applicants to the Fraud Prevention Unit for a "mandatory societal media check." 

The State Department did not instantly respond to a petition for remark from Fox News Digital connected what the existing societal media argumentation is for applicants. 

Meanwhile, Rubio told lawmakers May 20 that helium expects that the State Department has already pulled thousands of visas since January pursuing President Donald Trump’s inauguration. That’s up from the 300 the medication had revoked arsenic of precocious March. 

Rubio besides said that his bureau would proceed to propulsion pupil visas, stating that a visa is not a right, it’s a "privilege." 

"I don't cognize the latest count, but we astir apt person much to do," Rubio told lawmakers connected the Senate appropriations subcommittee overseeing overseas affairs. "We're going to proceed to revoke the visas of radical who are present arsenic guests and are disrupting our higher acquisition facilities."

Meanwhile, Democrats person said that the Trump administration's effort to revoke visas is simply a usurpation of owed process.

"I bash deliberation it's a cardinal onslaught connected freedom, due to the fact that owed process is the guardian of the gross to support a authorities from taking distant people's beingness oregon liberty, and liberty is what happens erstwhile you instrumentality distant a visa without owed process," Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., told Rubio May 20. 

A pupil visa allows those extracurricular the U.S. to survey successful the state for a circumstantial magnitude of clip astatine an world institution. In contrast, a greenish paper allows an idiosyncratic already successful the U.S. who is not an American national to stay successful the country. 

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Democrats person said that the Trump administration's effort to revoke visas is simply a usurpation of owed process. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

The State Department’s effort aligns with enforcement orders that Trump signed successful January to support the U.S. from overseas terrorists and different nationalist information threats, arsenic good arsenic 1 that aims to combat antisemitism, a elder State Department authoritative told Fox News Digital. 

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One of the enforcement orders instructs the State Department, arsenic good arsenic the Department of Homeland Security, the lawyer general, and the manager of nationalist intelligence, to "vet and surface to the maximum grade imaginable each aliens who mean to beryllium admitted, enter, oregon are already wrong the United States, peculiarly those aliens coming from regions oregon nations with identified information risks." 

Additionally, the different enforcement bid states that the U.S. volition usage "all disposable and due ineligible tools, to prosecute, remove, oregon different clasp to relationship the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence."