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US immigration officials look to expand social media data collection
Legal Interview |
2025/03/30 15:51
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U.S. immigration officials are asking the public and federal agencies to comment on a proposal to collect social media handles from people applying for benefits such as green cards or citizenship, to comply with an executive order from President Donald Trump.
The March 5 notice raised alarms from immigration and free speech advocates because it appears to expand the government’s reach in social media surveillance to people already vetted and in the U.S. legally, such as asylum seekers, green card and citizenship applicants -- and not just those applying to enter the country. That said, social media monitoring by immigration officials has been a practice for over a decade, since at least the second Obama administration and ramping up under Trump’s first term.
The Department of Homeland Security issued a 60-day notice asking for public commentary on its plan to comply with Trump’s executive order titled “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats.” The plan calls for “uniform vetting standards” and screening people for grounds of inadmissibility to the U.S., as well as identify verification and “national security screening.” It seeks to collect social media handles and the names of platforms, although not passwords.
The policy seeks to require people to share their social media handles when applying for U.S. citizenship, green card, asylum and other immigration benefits. The proposal is open to feedback from the public until May 5.
“The basic requirements that are in place right now is that people who are applying for immigrant and non-immigrant visas have to provide their social media handles,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, managing director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program at New York University. “Where I could see this impacting is someone who came into the country before visa-related social media handle collection started, so they wouldn’t have provided it before and now they’re being required to. Or maybe they did before, but their social media use has changed.”
“This fairly widely expanded policy to collect them for everyone applying for any kind of immigration benefit, including people who have already been vetted quite extensively,” she added.
What this points to — along with other signals the administration is sending such as detaining people and revoking student visas for participating in campus protests that the government deems antisemitic and sympathetic to the militant Palestinian group Hamas — Levinson-Waldman added, is the increased use of social media to “make these very high-stakes determinations about people.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service said the agency seeks to “strengthen fraud detection, prevent identity theft, and support the enforcement of rigorous screening and vetting measures to the fullest extent possible.”
“These efforts ensure that those seeking immigration benefits to live and work in the United States do not threaten public safety, undermine national security, or promote harmful anti-American ideologies,” the statement continued. USCIS estimates that the proposed policy change will affect about 3.6 million people.
How are social media accounts used now?
The U.S. government began ramping up the use of social media for immigration vetting in 2014 under then-President Barack Obama, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. In late 2015, the Department of Homeland Security began both “manual and automatic screening of the social media accounts of a limited number of individuals applying to travel to the United States, through various non-public pilot programs,” the nonpartisan law and policy institute explains on its website.
In May 2017, the U.S. Department of State issued an emergency notice to increase the screening of visa applicants. Brennan, along with other civil and human rights groups, opposed the move, arguing that it is “excessively burdensome and vague, is apt to chill speech, is discriminatory against Muslims, and has no security benefit.”
Two years later, the State Department began collecting social media handles from “nearly all foreigners” applying for visas to travel to the U.S. — about 15 million people a year.
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Turkish court orders key Erdogan rival jailed pending trial on corruption charges
Court Watch |
2025/03/25 12:44
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A court formally arrested the mayor of Istanbul, a key rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Sunday and ordered him jailed pending the outcome of a trial on corruption charges.
Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was detained following a raid on his residence earlier this week, sparking the largest wave of street demonstrations in Turkey in more than a decade. It also deepened concerns over democracy and rule of law in Turkey.
His imprisonment is widely regarded as a political move to remove a major contender from the next presidential race, currently scheduled for 2028. Government officials reject the accusations and insist that Turkey’s courts operate independently.
The prosecutor’s office said the court decided to jail Imamoglu on suspicion of running a criminal organization, accepting bribes, extortion, illegally recording personal data and bid-rigging. A request for him to be imprisoned on terror-related charges was rejected although he still faces prosecution. Following the court’s ruling, Imamoglu was transferred to Silivri prison, west of Istanbul.
The Interior Ministry later announced that Imamoglu had been suspended from duty as a “temporary measure.” The municipality had previously appointed an acting mayor from its governing council.
Alongside Imamoglu, 47 other people were also jailed pending trial, including a key aide and two district mayors from Istanbul, one of whom was replaced with a government appointee. A further 44 suspects were released under judicial control.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said Sunday that 323 people were detained the previous evening over disturbances at protests.
Largely peaceful protests across Turkey have seen hundreds of thousands come out in support of Imamoglu. However, there has been some violence, with police deploying water cannons, tear gas, pepper spray and firing plastic pellets at protesters in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, some of whom hurled stones, fireworks and other missiles at riot police.
The formal arrest came as more than 1.5 million members of the opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, began holding a primary presidential election to endorse Imamoglu, the sole candidate.
The party has also set up symbolic ballot boxes nationwide to allow people who are not party members to express their support for the mayor. Large crowds gathered early Sunday to cast a “solidarity ballot.”
“This is no longer just a problem of the Republican People’s Party, but a problem of Turkish democracy,” Fusun Erben, 69, said at a polling station in Istanbul’s Kadikoy district. “We do not accept our rights being so easily usurped. We will fight until the end.”
Speaking at a polling station in Bodrum, western Turkey, engineer Mehmet Dayanc, 38, said he feared that “in the end we’ll be like Russia, a country without an opposition, where only a single man participates in elections.”
In a message posted on social media, Imamoglu called on people to show “their struggle for democracy and justice to the entire world” at the ballot box. He warned Erdogan that he would be defeated by “our righteousness, our courage, our humility, our smiling face.”
“Honestly, we are embarrassed in the name of our legal system,” Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavas, a fellow member of Imamoglu’s CHP, told reporters after casting his vote, criticizing the lack of confidentiality in the proceedings.
CHP leader Ozgur Ozel said Imamoglu’s imprisonment was reminiscent of “Italian mafia methods.” Speaking at Istanbul City Hall, he added: “Imamoglu is on the one hand in prison and on the other hand on the way to the presidency.”
The Council of Europe, which focuses on promoting human rights and democracy, slammed the decision and demanded Imamoglu’s immediate release.
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Under threat from Trump, Columbia University agrees to policy changes
Topics |
2025/03/21 19:45
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Under threat from the Trump administration, Columbia University agreed to implement a host of policy changes Friday, including overhauling its rules for protests and conducting an immediate review of its Middle Eastern studies department.
The changes, detailed in a letter sent by the university’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, came one week after the Trump administration ordered the Ivy League school to enact those and other reforms or lose all federal funding, an ultimatum widely criticized in academia as an attack on academic freedom.
In her letter, Armstrong said the university would immediately appoint a senior vice provost to conduct a thorough review of the portfolio of its regional studies programs, “starting immediately with the Middle East.”
Columbia will also revamp its long-standing disciplinary process and bar protests inside academic buildings. Students will not be permitted to wear face masks on campus “for the purposes of concealing one’s identity.” An exception would be made for people wearing them for health reasons.
In an effort to expand “intellectual diversity” within the university, Columbia will also appoint new faculty members to its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies department. It will also adopt a new definition of antisemitism and expand programming in its Tel Aviv Center, a research hub based in Israel.
The policy changes were largely in line with demands made on the university by the Trump administration, which pulled $400 million in research grants and other federal funding, and had threatened to cut more, over the university’s handling of protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
The White House has labeled the protests antisemitic, a label rejected by those who participated in the student-led demonstrations.
A message seeking comment was left with a spokesperson for the Education Department. As a “precondition” for restoring funding, federal officials demanded that the university to place its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department under “academic receivership for a minimum of five years.”
They also told the university to ban masks on campus, adopt a new definition of antisemitism, abolish its current process for disciplining students and deliver a plan to ”reform undergraduate admissions, international recruiting, and graduate admissions practices.”
Historians had described the order as an unprecedented intrusion on university rights long treated by the Supreme Court as an extension of the First Amendment.
On Friday, freedom of speech advocates immediately decried Columbia’s decision to acquiesce. |
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Military veterans are becoming the face of Trump’s government cuts
Court Watch |
2025/03/17 19:47
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As congressional lawmakers scramble to respond to President Donald Trump’s slashing of the federal government, one group is already taking a front and center role: military veterans.
From layoffs at the Department of Veterans Affairs to a Pentagon purge of archives that documented diversity in the military, veterans have been acutely affected by Trump’s actions. And with the Republican president determined to continue slashing the federal government, the burden will only grow on veterans, who make up roughly 30% of the federal workforce and often tap government benefits they earned with their military service.
“At a moment of crisis for all of our veterans, the VA’s system of health care and benefits has been disastrously and disgracefully put on the chopping block by the Trump administration,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, at a news conference last week.
Most veterans voted for Trump last year — nearly 6 in 10, according to AP Votecast, a nationwide survey of more than 120,000 voters. Yet congressional Republicans are standing in support of Trump’s goals even as they encounter fierce pushback in their home districts. At a series of town halls this week, veterans angrily confronted Republican members as they defended the cuts made under Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
“Do your job!” Jay Carey, a military veteran, yelled at Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards at a town hall in North Carolina.
“I’m a retired military officer,” an attendee at another forum in Wyoming told Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman before questioning whether DOGE had actually discovered any “fraud.”
Although Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson advised his members to skip the town halls and claimed that they were being filled with paid protesters, some Republicans were still holding them and trying to respond to the criticism.
“It looks radical, but it’s not. I call it stewardship, in my opinion,” Republican Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida said on a tele-town hall. “I think they’re doing right by the American taxpayer. And I support that principle of DOGE.”
Still, some Republicans have expressed unease with the seemingly indiscriminate firings of veterans, especially when they have not been looped in on the administration’s plans. At a town hall on Friday, Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw told the audience, “We’re learning about this stuff at the speed of light, the way you are. I think there’s been some babies thrown out with the bath water here, but we’re still gathering information on it.”
Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL, added, “If you’re doing a job that we need you to do, you’re doing it well, yeah, we’ve got to fight for you.”
The Republican chair of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Rep. Mike Bost, assured listeners on a tele-town hall last week that he and Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins are talking regularly. As the VA implements plans to cut roughly 80,000 jobs, Bost has said he is watching the process closely, but he has expressed support and echoed Collins’ assurances that veterans’ health care and benefits won’t be slashed.
“They’ve cut a lot, but understand this: Essential jobs are not being cut,” Bost said, but then added that his office was helping alert the VA when people with essential jobs had in fact been terminated.
Two federal judges this month ordered the Trump administration to rehire the probationary employees who were let go in the mass firings. At the VA, some of those employees have now been put on administrative leave, but a sense of dread and confusion is still hanging over much of the federal workforce.
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