The State Department announced last week it is restarting interviews and processing foreign student visas, and applicants will now be required to make their social media accounts public for vetting or face potential denial.
The agency said it is looking for those "who pose a threat to U.S. national security," but critics say the criteria is broad and blurs the line between national surveillance and public expression, especially on private social media accounts.
"This is new, it's unprecedented," said Greg Nojeim, the senior counsel and director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology.
"It's never before been the case that a person who had set their social media account to private would have to set it to public in order to be admitted to the United States," he said.
The U.S. government has expanded its monitoring of social media over the past decade, but the Trump administration's latest focus on student visas marks a new escalation of this practice.
Social media checks have "become more pervasive and ideologically driven over time," the think tank Brennan Center for Justice wrote in a report this year.
Under the new guidance, visa applicants will be required to list all social media usernames or handles of every platform they used in the past five years, the spokesperson said. Omission of social media information could result in denial or ineligibility for future visas.
It is not clear the specific content State Department consular officers will be looking for, though some believe the change comes amid the Trump administration's recent arrests of pro-Palestinian campus activists this year.
Some observers fear that vague criteria could confuse applicants and serve as a way for the government to stifle speech critical of the administration or misaligned with U.S. policy.
"Censoring the speech of non-citizens on social media seems to be a purpose of this requirement," Nojeim told The Hill, adding users will likely be "more hesitant" to express themselves on social media.
Read more in a full report Tuesday morning.
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