International students sue over Trump’s social media surveillance plan

Fifteen Iranian students and researchers sued the Trump medication for completely halting pupil visa interviews portion it determines whether to vet each visa applicants’ societal media accounts.

The suit, filed against Secretary of State Marco Rubio successful a Virginia national court, claims that the intermission connected pupil visa interviews violates the Administrative Procedures Act, a instrumentality prohibiting capricious rule-making. The ailment is presently sealed. 

In an email, Curtis Morrison and Hamdi Masri, lawyers for the students, noted that the State Department has required visa applicants to disclose their societal media handles since May 2019. Visa applicants from definite Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, are already taxable to “extensive societal media vetting,” Masri said, adding that Trump seemed to privation to “ensure students entering align with his governmental values.”

The students and researchers who brought the suit against Rubio were admitted to universities crossed the state — including Yale, Ohio State, and the University of South Florida — for postgraduate programs successful machine science, engineering, finance, and different disciplines. Per their attorneys, each of the students had already attended visa interviews, but each of their applications are presently “awaiting nationalist information vetting.” Some of the students were interviewed implicit a twelvemonth ago.

The intermission connected pupil visa interviews is portion of the Trump administration’s multi-pronged onslaught connected universities and planetary students. On Wednesday, Rubio said the State Department would commencement moving with the  Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese Students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party oregon studying successful captious fields.” On May 22nd, DHS rescinded Harvard’s access to a national database utilized to way overseas students’ enrollment, putting astir 6,800 radical enrolled astatine Harvard astatine hazard of contiguous deportation until a national justice intervened.

Rubio has also suspended the visas of planetary students progressive successful pro-Palestine protests connected campus. More recently, the State Department restricted visas of “foreign nationals who are liable for censorship of protected code successful the United States,” i.e., regulators who enforce the European Union’s Digital Services Act.