Trump’s ambiguous and confusing immigration policies are the point

In August, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that adjudicates and grants immigration benefits such as visas, residency, and naturalization, issued a strange decision Three-page policy alert. Among other things, it vaguely noted that the agency would screen applicants who “support or promote anti-American ideologies or activities” and “apply all relevant immigration laws to the fullest extent, including the use of discretion, to deny a request for benefits.” Effectively, it instructed residents to debar people engaging in anti-Americanism, which it did not specify there or anywhere else.

What is anti-Americanism? What exactly are these “ideologies or activities”? Without any meaningful guidance, how can anyone on either side of the immigration process recognize him? Maybe imprecision is the point. After three weeks, practitioners say Edge It is almost impossible to know how to properly advise clients on or prepare for this standard. “The problem you mentioned is that it’s completely pretextual anyway, and having something that vague is not wrong, it’s not a problem, that’s just what they want. Because if they have it vague, they can say they can exclude someone for any reason they want,” said Pittsburgh-based immigration attorney Adam S. Greenberg.

In a possible indication of where the administration might draw the line, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau Posting that people “praise, justify, or ridicule” A person can be refused visas or stripped of their position in the Charlie Kirk assassination without reference to any specific authority. The uncertainty “creates an environment of self-censorship where people delete their accounts, delete their posts, or simply don’t post things because they’re worried that they’ll have to report it to the government and that the government might read it and that could impact their immigration status in the future,” said Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“The fear about whether this will impact applications has been there for a while, since March or even before that, with the administration’s anti-Semitism policy,” said New York-based immigration lawyer and researcher Cyrus Mehta. Previous advertisement It will scan applicants’ social media for supposedly anti-Semitic content. “The policy of anti-Americanism actually stems from the policy of anti-Semitism.”

Mehta said he has attended several naturalization interviews since the announcement and has not watched them. However, clients remain on edge and lawyers are confused. “I don’t know how it will be applied. It will probably be applied more forcefully, and I think it is much more insidious than anti-Semitism… It’s really vague, it’s really broad.” He said that his and many other lawyers’ belief in free speech “is completely at odds with the advice one might have to give clients.”

Keeping immigration policies broad and discretionary to confuse applicants was a tendency for Donald Trump to return to his first term. the General charge ruleFor example, immigrants have threatened to deny their legal status due to unusually subjective analyzes of their risk of becoming dependent on public assistance, which may take into account not only current but hypothetical use of benefits such as food stamps. In the end, I’ve never heard of anyone being denied status specifically on the basis of an expanded public charges analysis, at least in part because it was in effect only briefly before being blocked by a federal judge during the coronavirus outbreak. However, 2024 report The Urban Institute found widespread reluctance among immigrant and mixed families to use safety net benefits to which they are entitled, including some state and local benefits that would not have been part of the overall calculus.

The idea, at least in part, was for people to overcorrect, and they overcorrected. Now, Trump officials are doing the same thing, but for the sake of expression. This is not the first immigration effort to target what looks largely like protected speech, after the now-infamous speech Arrest of former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil and others She participated in protests and activism on campus, which shocked observers earlier this year. However, this appears much more expansive, and comes on the heels of the Department of Homeland Security and State Department announcing that the visa provisions will require applicants to share all of their social media handles and set their accounts to… Be visible to the publicwhich together suggest that online criticism of management can now constitute a real barricade to status. “It’s clearly changed behavior. A lot of people are saying, ‘Okay, I’m making sure I don’t post anything.'” “I’ve never had that reaction before,” Mehta said.

The guidance does not specify how government arbitrators will evaluate applicants for “anti-American” sentiment, although there are some troubling indications in other recent immigration proceedings. In April, the administration suddenly began mass termination of thousands of student visas across the country Suddenly reversed course It faced dozens of lawsuits and legal losses. almost She appeared in court That department officials simply ran international student information data through a federal crime information database and then directed terminations without confirming whether the data was accurate or whether the students identified had actually committed crimes that could result in loss of status. Activists and lawyers worry that a similar approach could be used to identify supposed anti-American ideology.

“We can guess based on the unconfirmed technical applications that the Trump administration has implemented since February,” Galperin said. “DOGE in particular’s behavior is typically to create massive data sets and stitch it all together in a largely undifferentiated way.” “You get a lot of very inaccurate or useless data, and then you either just search for inflammatory keywords — which is how funding ends up being withdrawn for talking about mutations or transgenic mice — and then you just feed the whole thing into the AI ​​and have the AI ​​make the decision, or you have the AI ​​write a summary, which, again, you feed garbage into the garbage machine that More garbage will then come out. “

USCIS did not respond to a list of detailed questions, including how it defined anti-Americanism, what criteria it was giving its adjudicators, and whether it would use any automated tools to evaluate applicants.

At the very least, students whose visas were revoked were able to pursue legal action on the grounds that the government clearly lacked any real justification for trying to terminate their status. When it comes to the initial issuance of benefits such as work and student visas or even permanent residency, the government by law gets a fair amount of leeway, and does not always have to explicitly explain the reason for the denial. This opens the possibility of applicants being rejected on this anti-American basis without them knowing it.

“The adjustment (to permanent residency) is discretionary. The extension of status is discretionary. Exemptions are discretionary. They don’t have to give their reasons,” Greenberg said. While a federal court could theoretically point out that a denial violates the First Amendment, there are limited ways for people to actually appeal these decisions or get clarification about why they were denied, especially at consulates abroad.

“I think, for example, students applying for a visa to study in the United States are particularly vulnerable,” Mehta said. “It would be very difficult for everyone to file lawsuits. So a lot of people are trying to comply. A lot of people are basically avoiding posting, you know.”