Trump administration to vet immigration applications for 'anti-Americanism'
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a "policy alert, opens new tab" dated Tuesday that it gave immigration officers new guidance on how to exercise discretion in cases where foreign applicants "support or promote anti-American ideologies or activities" as well as "antisemitic terrorism."
Trump has labeled a range of voices as anti-American, including historians and museums documenting U.S. slavery and pro-Palestinian protesters opposing U.S. ally Israel's military assault on Gaza.
"Anti-American activity will be an overwhelmingly negative factor in any discretionary analysis," USCIS said.
"America's benefits should not be given to those who despise the country and promote anti-American ideologies."
The announcement did not define anti-Americanism. But the policy manual refers to a section of federal law about prohibiting naturalization of people "opposed to government or law, or who favor totalitarian forms of government."
The full text mentions supporters of communism or totalitarian regimes and people who advocate overthrow of the U.S. government and violence against government officers, among other factors.
USCIS said it expanded the types of applications that have social media vetting, and reviews for "anti-American activity" will be added to that vetting.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said the step hearkened to the 1950s when Senator Joseph McCarthy hunted alleged communists in a campaign that became synonymous with political persecution.
"McCarthyism returns to immigration law," he said. Anti-Americanism "has no prior precedent in immigration law and its definition is entirely up to the Trump admin."
In April, the U.S. government said it would begin screening the social media of immigrants and visa applicants for what it called antisemitic activity. Rights advocates raised free speech and surveillance concerns.
(This story has been refiled to fix a typo in the headline)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
5 minutes ago
- The Independent
White House rattled by one Smithsonian painting it claims proves Trump's ‘out of control' claims
The Trump administration claims a painting of refugees at the U.S.-Mexico border that once hung in a Smithsonian-affiliated museum is evidence that the institution is 'out of control,' the White House's latest criticism of the Smithsonian as it conducts a wide-ranging ideological audit of Washington's flagship museums. In a Thursday post on X, the administration shared an image of Refugees Crossing the Border Wall Into South Texas, a 2020 work from painter Rigoberto A. Gonzalez showing a family of four scaling the U.S.-Mexico border wall with a ladder. 'This is 'art' from the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery commemorating the act of illegally crossing the "exclusionary" border. This was even made a finalist for one of its awards,' reads a Thursday X post from the administration. 'This is what President Trump means when he says the Smithsonian is "OUT OF CONTROL." The work, one of the finalists in a 2022 open call for 'American portraiture today,' hung in the National Portrait Gallery between 2022 and early 2023. It is unclear if the painting is still in any Smithsonian-affiliated museums. The Independent has contacted Gonzalez, the Smithsonian, and the National Portrait Gallery for comment. 'For several years the news media have been reporting stories on the rising numbers of families, especially children, immigrating to the U.S., and the escalating violence on the border between the U.S. and Mexico,' Gonzalez, who was born in Mexico and now teaches at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, told a campus website of his work. 'This is too big a story to report through raw journalism... I believe that painting can evoke an authentic aesthetic experience that conveys meaning in people's lives and work as a catalyst for change." The White House did not answer questions from The Independent about how the painting came to the administration's attention, or whether the work was still hanging in the Smithsonian. 'Illegal immigration is bad and should not be glorified,' White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement. 'Under the Trump Administration if you want to enter our country, you must follow our laws and go through the legal process.' Refugees and asylum-seekers seeking to enter the U.S. are in fact protected by law and not inherently considered illegal immigrants. The Trump administration has attempted to suspend refugee admissions into the U.S. and requests for asylum at the border, though a federal appeals court this month narrowed the asylum moves. The Gonzalez painting was mentioned in a 2022 New York Times piece that the administration has cited in its campaign to overhaul the Smithsonian, in which then-director of the National Portrait Gallery Kim Sajet spoke of her desire to include a broader range of individuals and artists in the longstanding museum, rather than the historic focus on the 'wealthy, the pale and the male.' Sajet stepped down in June. Critics lashed out at the administration for its criticism of the painting. 'It's a powerful portrait of a family making a hard decision to seek a better life,' Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wrote on X. 'Imagine how fragile you have to be to not understand why this art has value — and how afraid you are of free speech.' The fracas over the painting is part of the administration's larger push to reshape the Smithsonian to be in line with the administration's view of history. A White House official helping lead the effort this week accused the institution's Washington museums of putting too much focus on slavery. 'The fact that our country was involved in slavery is awful. No one thinks otherwise,' Lindsey Halligan, special assistant to the president, told Fox News on Wednesday. 'But what I saw when I was going through the museum was an overemphasis on slavery. I think there should be more of an overemphasis on how far we have come since slavery.' Earlier this week, the president said his Smithsonian campaign, which was described to officials in a letter earlier this month, was part of a concerted effort to eliminate 'woke' ideology, just as he had from U.S. universities, a push the administration had previously largely described as an attempt to stop campus antisemitism. 'The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of 'WOKE,'' Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday. 'The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.' 'This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the president's directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions,' a letter to Smithsonian officials last week, viewed by The Wall Street Journal, states.
Reuters
5 minutes ago
- Reuters
California lawmakers swiftly pass Democrats' congressional redistricting plan
LOS ANGELES, Aug 21 (Reuters) - The California legislature on Thursday approved a redistricting package aimed at giving Democrats five more seats in the U.S. Congress, countering a partisan advantage President Donald Trump hoped to gain from a similar Republican plan to redraw political maps in Texas. California Democrats pushed the three bills through the state Senate and Assembly in a remarkable flurry of fast-track action, ahead of a Friday deadline set for getting the newly drawn districts on the ballot in time for a special election on November 4. Swift passage of the measures marked a decisive victory for Governor Gavin Newsom, who has led the charge in pushing back against what he and fellow Democrats nationally have decried as Trump's attempt at a power grab in the Republican-led state of Texas. Newsom, who enjoys a Democratic super-majority in both houses of the California legislature, ultimately seeks voter support for his plan. If it succeeds, it would neutralize the Trump-backed Texas bill designed to flip five Democratic seats to Republican control in the U.S. House of Representatives. Republicans, including Trump, have openly acknowledged that the Texas effort is about boosting their political clout by helping to preserve the party's slim U.S. House majority in the November 2026 midterm races. That election already is shaping up as closely fought. Democrats have characterized their bid to depart from California's usual independent, bipartisan redistricting process - adopted by voters in 2008 - as a temporary "emergency" strategy to combat what they see as extreme Republican moves to unfairly rig the system. "The decks are stacked against us, so what we need to do is fight back," California Senator Lena Gonzalez, a joint author of the redistricting plan, said as the state Senate opened floor debate on the bill. Democrats say more than 70% of their newly drawn congressional districts were adopted from maps used by the independent commission in formulating the current boundaries. Republican Senator Tony Strickland objected, saying, "These maps were drawn behind closed doors." Within six hours, however, the two houses of the legislature had approved all three measures, voting along party lines to approve each bill in succession and sending it to the other body for its concurrence. Unlike the California initiative, the newly drawn district lines in Texas would go into effect without voter approval, though Democrats have vowed to challenge the plan in court. The Texas measure cleared a major hurdle on Wednesday when the state House of Representatives in Austin adopted it on an 88-52 party-line vote. The Texas Senate is expected to pass the measure next, possibly on Thursday. The two versions of the bill may then need to be reconciled before the legislation goes to Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who has said he will sign it. "Big WIN for the Great State of Texas," Trump said on his Truth Social platform. Democrats and civil rights groups say the new Texas map further dilutes the voting power of Hispanic and Black voters, violating federal law that forbids redrawing political lines on the basis of racial or ethnic discrimination. In pursuing redistricting mid-decade, both sides are breaking with long-observed political custom of generally altering political maps once every 10 years, following the U.S. Census to adjust for population changes. Most Americans believe redrawing congressional lines to maximize political gain, known as gerrymandering, is bad for democracy, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found. Former President Barack Obama weighed in on the issue this week, supporting the Democratic effort as a necessary short-term response to Republican overreach in Texas. But he said he remained uneasy about the long-term consequences of gerrymandering. Consideration of the Texas bill was delayed for two weeks after more than 50 Democratic state House members staged a walkout that denied Republicans the legislative quorum they needed to proceed. Their collective absence sparked extraordinary efforts by Abbott and other Republican leaders to pressure the Democrats to relent, including civil arrest warrants, the imposition of fines and threats to withhold their pay. The Democrats finally returned to Austin on Monday, by which time their legislative boycott had galvanized Democratic leaders in other states, especially California, where Newsom has vowed to "fight fire with fire." "We're going to punch this bully in the mouth, and we're going to win," Newsom told reporters in a video conference call on Wednesday. "This is about the rule of Don versus the rule of law." He was joined on the call by Texas Representative Nicole Collier, one of the leaders of the Austin walkout. "These are the most segregated maps that have been presented in Texas since the 1960s," said Collier, who represents a predominantly non-white Fort Worth state district. The Texas-California clash may be just the start. Other Republican-controlled states -- including Ohio, Florida, Indiana and Missouri -- are moving forward with or considering their own redistricting efforts, as are Democratic-led states such as Maryland and Illinois.
The Guardian
36 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Ice's detention of Atlanta reporter seeks to ‘silence him', ACLU petition says
The ACLU called Immigration and Customs Enforcement's continued detention of Atlanta-area journalist Mario Guevara an act of retaliation for his reporting on immigration raids, according to a federal petition filed on Thursday. Guevara, a Salvadorian immigrant who has been in the United States for more than 20 years, was arrested on 14 June by a police officer in suburban Atlanta while covering the 'No Kings' day protests in a neighborhood with a high density of immigrants. Despite all charges being dropped, Guevara has been in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention in south Georgia for almost two months, the only journalist in the US imprisoned as a consequence of their work today, the ACLU said. Guevara founded MG News, a social media-driven news organization that has become increasingly important to his Spanish-speaking audience for his coverage of Ice activities in metro Atlanta. As he was being arrested, Guevara was livestreaming on Facebook to more than a million followers. 'The government's continuing detention of Mr Guevara on the basis of his journalism is intended to silence him, prevent him from reporting in the future, and retaliate against him for his past speech and reporting, in violation of the first amendment,' the filing in the Brunswick, Georgia, courthouse states. 'The government's continuing detention of Mr Guevara also violates the substantive due process clause of the fifth amendment because it has no legitimate objective and is punitive.' Guevara has no criminal history and has been issued a work permit. An immigration judge administratively closed an order for his deportation a decade ago. The oldest of his two children who are US citizens has sponsored his green card application. After his arrest in June, DeKalb county prosecutors dropped the misdemeanor charges against Guevara almost immediately. The sheriff's office of neighboring Gwinnett county – taking issue with his livestreaming a prostitution arrest a month earlier – filed misdemeanor traffic charges shortly after Guevara's arrest. Gwinnett prosecutors dropped those charges days later. Nonetheless, Guevara is still in the Folkston Ice detention center and faces removal. An immigration judge issued a $7,500 bond for Guevara in June, but immigration enforcement officials appealed that bond decision and it is now on hold with no date set to hear the appeal. The ACLU filing attempts to induce the federal court to intervene. Referring to the bond hearing in June, the ACLU noted that the immigration judge recognized the first amendment implications of his detention. The judge said in his bond order that 'if respondent was acting as a journalist, he is protected by freedom of speech as detailed in the constitution and longstanding, precedential case law', and noted that 'reporting on Ice raids in the community, as respondent has done, is a national concern and many other journalists across the nation are also reporting on this issue'. Immigration enforcement officials have argued in court that Guevara presents a danger to the community because he livestreams, records and publishes law enforcement activities and shares his reporting with the public. The ACLU filing details Guevara's extensive cooperation with law enforcement over the years, and notes that a metro Atlanta law enforcement officer testified on his behalf at the bond hearing. In its filing, the ACLU argues that it is 'highly unusual' for the government to appeal an immigration judge's decision to grant bond when someone has no significant criminal history and presents strong evidence that he's not a danger to the community. 'The government generally reserves bond appeals, and especially stays, for cases involving serious criminal conduct, clear evidence of danger to the community or major flight risk,' the ACLU wrote, adding that the government relies almost exclusively on 'Mr Guevara's reporting as justification for his continued detention'. The ACLU noted that immigration officials presented Guevara's live stream of a Gwinnett county sheriff's office operation in its argument against issuing a bond in July. 'The livestreaming videos that formed the basis for the misdemeanor traffic violations are no longer available on the MG News or Mr Guevara's Facebook pages,' the ACLU filing states. 'Neither Mr Guevara nor an employee of MG News removed these videos from these Facebook pages. Mr Guevara is not aware of how or why the videos were removed.' The petition asks for the court to demand an answer to the petition within three days, for Guevara's bond case to be removed to federal court, for the stay on his bond to be lifted, and for the court to declare that Ice's effort to continue detention violates the first amendment and the due process clause of the fifth amendment.
