Marco Rubio seeks to cancel visas of foreign students who post pro-Hamas content on social media

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is reportedly launching an AI-based program that will review social media accounts of foreign nationals that hold visas who appear to support terrorist groups like Hamas, including student visa holders. 

Included in the "Catch and Revoke" effort will be AI-assisted reviews of the social media accounts of tens of thousands of student visa holders, senior State Department officials told Axios.

Officials plan to examine internal databases to see if visa holders had been arrested but allowed under the Biden administration to remain in the country. Officials have reportedly already looked through 100,000 people in the Student Exchange Visitor System since October 2023 to see if any visas had been revoked due to a student being arrested or suspended.

One senior State Department official told the outlet, "We found literally zero visa revocations during the Biden administration," which "suggests a blind eye attitude toward law enforcement."

Officials also said that they are checking news reports of anti-Israel protests and lawsuits launched by Jewish students that highlight foreign nationals that allegedly engaged in antisemitic activities without consequences. The official said it was a "whole of government and whole of authority approach," with the State Department working with the Justice and Homeland Security departments.

While some expressed concerns about the use of AI in these efforts, the senior State Department official 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."

The official said it could be grounds for visa revocation for foreign nationals if social media posts from a foreign national appear to endorse the October 7 attack on Israel and appear "pro-Hamas."

"Under President Trump, the Immigration Nationality Act is great again," the official added. The Immigration Nationality Act of 1953 allows the secretary of state to revoke visas from foreign nationals deemed a threat to the country.

This comes as Trump has declared that federal funding would be stripped from schools that allow "illegal protests" and agitators imprisoned or deported.

Trump wrote, "All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter."

In the wake of the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of over 1,200 people and saw hundreds taken hostage, anti-Israel protests and encampments have broken out across the nation, largely at college campuses. Many campuses in 2024 saw Gaza camps pop up on campus, occupying campus parks and buildings.