Report: US plans to use AI to ‘catch and revoke’ pro-Palestine student visas

The administration of US President Donald Trump has initiated an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-assisted drive to detect and annul the visas of foreign nationals and students supporting the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas on American soil.

The Virginia-based news website Axios reported on Thursday that the US State Department plans to use AI to revoke visas of foreign students who it perceives as supporters of Hamas, which has been designated by Washington as a “terrorist” organization since 1997.

“The AI-fueled ‘catch and revoke’ effort will include AI-assisted reviews of tens of thousands of student visa holders’ social media accounts,” the report said, citing senior State Department officials.

“Officials will also check news reports of previous demonstrations against Israel’s policies and Jewish students’ lawsuits highlighting foreign nationals allegedly engaging in anti-Semitism.”

The news website underlined that, “The reviews of social media accounts are particularly looking for evidence of alleged terrorist sympathies expressed after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.”

Axios said the State Department would also look into foreign students who were arrested in anti-Israel demonstrations and were allowed to remain in the country under the Biden administration.

The website censured the Trump administration’s visa revocation bid via AI as a “dramatic escalation in the US government's policing of foreign nationals' conduct and speech.”

The move to investigate foreign students for pro-Hamas sentiment came after Trump declared last week that all federal funds will be withdrawn for higher education institutions that allow “illegal protests” to take place.

The incumbent president also signed an executive order in January to combat what was claimed to be anti-Semitism and 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 barbaric aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip after Hamas’s October 2023 retaliatory attack on the occupied territories.

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Rights advocates concerned by Trump’s plan

Reacting to the controversial move, free speech advocates like the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and pro-Palestinian groups said AI should not be relied upon for assessments related to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

AI tools “cannot be relied on to parse the nuances of expression about complex and contested matters like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” said Sarah McLaughlin, a scholar at FIRE.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said the reported revocation effort “signals an alarming erosion of constitutionally protected free speech and privacy rights.”

Since Israel's atrocious onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, universities and academic institutions as well as pro-Palestine groups and individuals have staged widespread rallies in support of Gazans across Europe and the United States, facing heavy-handed crackdown by their respective governments and security forces.

Israel launched its brutal US-backed aggression against Gaza after Hamas-led resistance groups carried out a historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

The Tel Aviv regime failed to achieve its declared objectives of freeing captives and eliminating Hamas despite killing at least 48,446 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in Gaza.

Israel accepted Hamas’s longstanding negotiation terms under a three-phase Gaza ceasefire, which began on January 19.

Later, however, Israel disrupted the truce by refusing to move forward to its second stage.

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