Trump Admin Reportedly Using AI to Label, Target Visa Holders as “Pro-Hamas”

The Trump administration is reportedly using AI technologies in order to label foreign nationals in the U.S. as “pro-Hamas” and revoke their visas, a new report finds, in a chilling program called “Catch and Revoke.”

The initiative, launched by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, will use AI to scour the social media accounts of student visa holders for “evidence of alleged terrorist sympathies expressed after Hamas’ Oct. 7 2023, attack,” Axios has reported, citing senior State Department officials.

They are also checking news reports of protests and lawsuits from Jewish students to root out visa holders “allegedly engaged in antisemitic activity without consequence,” Axios’s report said. “Antisemitic activity” and “terrorist sympathies” are common code words used by Zionist authorities to target any speech expressing support for Palestinian rights — in a time when sympathies for Palestinians are at an all time high among the American public.

One official said that the administration is taking a “whole of government and whole of authority” approach,” with the departments of Justice and Homeland Security also helping to administer the program seemingly designed to crush dissent. Trump has issued numerous orders calling for the government to crack down on pro-Palestine protesters, and this week, threatened to imprison or deport activists participating in student protests for Palestinian rights.

The program represents an alarming escalation against the right to freedom of expression for advocates for Palestinian rights, who have already faced heavy repression for opposition to the Gaza genocide and in decades past. Advocates have raised alarm over the program, saying that it clearly tramples on free speech rights and harkens back to historic repression and surveillance of anti-war and Muslim advocates under laws like the Patriot Act.

“This should concern all Americans. This is a First Amendment and freedom of speech issue and the administration will overplay its hand,” Abed Ayoub, executive director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, told Axios. “Americans won’t like this. They’ll view this as capitulating free speech rights for a foreign nation.”

Ayoub said that the program parallels the Nixon administration’s Operation Boulder, in which the federal government surveilled and repressed Arab Americans in the wake of the 1967 Naksa, in which Israel seized the West Bank, Gaza, the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, and the Syrian Golan Heights.

“Another reminder that Palestine is the canary in the coal mine of authoritarianism and repression,” said Middle East analyst Yousef Munayyer, who heads the Arab Center Washington D.C.’s Palestine/Israel program. “The bombs they drop in Palestine won’t stay there. The laws that target Palestine won’t stop there. The tech tools they abuse won’t be limited to there.”

Ayoub further pointed out that the use of AI in the program is particularly concerning.

“With the advent of AI, it’s even scarier because they’re policing speech and using faulty technology,” Ayoub said.

Indeed, AI technologies have been demonstrated to have racist biases, including Islamophobia.

Further, it’s unclear what AI programs are being used, but the Israeli military has made extensive use of U.S.-created AI technology in order to generate targets for assassination — including children — as part of its genocide in Gaza. Israel is also reportedly training a ChatGPT-like software on Arabic conversations obtained through surveillance of Palestinians, which experts say the military could use to incriminate and target Palestinians.