[ad_1]
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced Wednesday that it will be scrubbing through immigrants’ social media accounts in search of “antisemitic activity” as grounds for denying immigration benefit requests.
“This will immediately affect aliens applying for lawful permanent resident status, foreign students and aliens affiliated with educational institutions linked to antisemitic activity,” the statement said.
The announcement comes less than a month after the Department of Homeland Security used a similar excuse to shred the constitutional rights of legal immigrants, who were arrested and threatened with deportation for participating in Pro-Palestinian protests.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has terrified people across the country, disappearing student activists like Rumeysa Ozturk, a PhD candidate at Tufts University who was arrested in front of her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts, by ICE officers.
And President Donald Trump has been attacking higher education institutions like Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton as part of the ongoing “Federal Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism” investigations. Trump has threatened to withhold billions in federal grants unless they comply in restricting First Amendment rights on campus.
Of course, if the Trump administration had any real interest in combatting antisemitism, it would start with Trump and co-president Elon Musk.
Musk bought Twitter, rebranded it as X, and then promoted wildly antisemitic content and various conspiracy theories, many of which involve a Jewish cabal pulling the global strings of power.
And Trump reportedly kept a copy of Adolf Hitler’s speeches by his bedside, preemptively blamed liberal Jews for any future election losses, and called Jewish Sen. Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, ”a Palestinian as far as I’m concerned.”
This is the latest cynical move by the Trump administration to hide behind its phony concern about antisemitism to carry out what journalist Yair Rosenberg recently described in The Atlantic as “a radical agenda that has nothing to do with Jews at all—and that most American Jews do not support.”
None of the Trump administration’s recent actions have anything to do with protecting Jews—who overwhelmingly voted against Trump—or combatting antisemitism.
Instead, they’re just the latest ugly justification for Dear Leader’s trampling of the Constitution while advancing his xenophobic crusade against immigrants.
Click here for Daily Kos’ Bluesky Starter Pack. Join us on Bluesky and @#$% Elon Musk!
[ad_2]
Source link
