Federal officers to vet social media accounts of visa candidates heading to Harvard | Training

A cable despatched Friday signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and obtained by The Related Press accused the college of failing to maintain violence and antisemitism off campus. It mentioned the vetting measure will assist consular officers establish candidates with a historical past of these offenses “and to duly contemplate their visa eligibility below U.S. immigration legislation.”

The measure was despatched to all U.S. embassies and consulates, and it takes impact instantly. It’s going to function a pilot program that could possibly be expanded extra broadly, in line with the cable.

Harvard didn’t instantly reply to an electronic mail requesting remark.

The college was the primary to overtly defy White Home calls for for modifications at elite colleges the administration has criticized as hotbeds of liberalism and antisemitism.

Since then, the federal authorities has stripped the nation’s oldest and wealthiest college of $2.6 billion in federal grants, forcing it to self-fund a lot of its analysis operation. President Donald Trump has mentioned he desires to revoke the college of its tax-exempt standing.

Final week, Harvard sued the federal authorities after Division of Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem revoked its means to host international college students at its campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A federal decide has since blocked the transfer.

Greater than 1 / 4 of Harvard’s pupil physique at its Cambridge campus are international college students. Most are graduate college students, coming from greater than 100 international locations.

Earlier this week, the State Division paused the scheduling of latest visa interviews for international college students seeking to examine within the U.S., saying it was making ready to broaden the screening of their exercise on social media. It is unclear whether or not that pause has been lifted.

The brand new measure expands on Trump’s earlier administration introducing evaluations of visa candidates’ social media accounts. It remained in place throughout former President Joe Biden’s administration.

The measure instructs officers to notice whether or not a visa applicant doesn’t have an internet presence or has their social media accounts set to non-public and whether or not that “could also be reflective of evasiveness and name into query the applicant’s credibility.”

“In case you are not glad that the applicant credibility, and to your private satisfaction, meets the requirements required by the visa classification for which he’s making use of, refuse the applicant,” the cable mentioned.

Officers have additionally been instructed to transcend simply reviewing social media accounts and to conduct a broader investigation of the particular person’s on-line presence, in line with the cable.

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