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According to reports, the State Department is launching a new project that relies on artificial intelligence to identify individuals residing in the United States who may be in support of Hamas or other terrorist groups, with the intent of canceling their visas.
Through the use of AI technology, officials are planning to examine the social media profiles of international students holding visas to determine whether there are any indications of support for Hamas following the terrorist attack on October 7, 2023, as detailed by Axios.
This initiative, known as “Catch and Revoke,” is said to involve analyzing various news sources to identify the names of foreign citizens who have participated in activities that are anti-Semitic in nature.
“Those who support designated terrorist organizations, including Hamas, threaten our national security. The United States has zero tolerance for foreign visitors who support terrorists,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared Thursday.
“Violators of US law — including international students — face visa denial or revocation, and deportation.”
Authorities will also comb government databases to see whether the Biden administration permitted any visa holders who were arrested to remain within the country, per the report.
The revelation comes after President Trump declared earlier this week that all federal funds will cease for institutions of higher education that permit “illegal protests.”
“Agitators will be imprisoned/ or permanently sent back to the country from which they came,” he added on Truth Social. “American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on the crime, arrested.”
The State Department’s effort is part of a “whole of government” approach to combating anti-semitism and includes collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security as well as the Justice Department.
“We found literally zero visa revocations during the Biden administration,” one official told Axios, “which suggests a blind-eye attitude toward law enforcement.”
Officials had looked through 100,000 individuals in the student visa system since Oct. 2023 to gauge whether the Biden administration had pursued any revocations, Axios reported.
There were an estimated 1.5 million active F-1 and M-1 student visas in 2023, according to data from the DHS.
Rubio, 53, enjoys broad powers under the Immigration Nationality Act of 1952 to yank visas from foreigners considered to be a threat.
As a senator, Rubio had called for the Biden administration to pull visas in response to the surge in anti-semitism across the country in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack.
Back in January, as first reported by The Post, Trump, 78, had ordered federal agencies to flag “all civil and criminal authorities” at their disposal to combat anti-semitism.
The executive order specifically called for visas to be revoked against foreign students who violated the law during the anti-Israel unrest that swept campuses across the country last year.
“I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before,” Trump declared in the executive order.
Critics have raised free speech concerns, but a State Department official countered that “it would be negligent for the department that takes national security seriously to ignore publicly available information about [visa] applicants in terms of AI tools.”
Scores of Republicans in Congress have cheered Trump’s push to crack down on anti-semitism on campuses.
“We have a president who has a moral clarity about what freedom in America is all about,” House Education Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) told The Post. “Dissent, demonstrations, etc on campuses are to be encouraged for freedom of speech, but not … [when it] that takes away freedom and liberty for a certain set of students and teachers.”
Walberg argued that the red line for the protests is violence and laws such as the Civil Rights Act.
The Post contacted the State Department for comment.