Three labor unions are fighting President Donald Trump, claiming his administration violated the rights of legal visa holders by monitoring their social media accounts.
The unions on Thursday filed a lawsuit against Trump’s administration, arguing it violated those individuals’ First Amendment rights via a program to scour their accounts and find their viewpoints on issues such as the United States government and Israel, Fox News reported on Friday.
“United Auto Workers, Communications Workers of America and the American Federation of Teachers sued the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” the article said.
However, “Administration officials have purported that foreigners do not have the same constitutional rights as U.S. citizens and do not have a right to hold a visa, as the federal government seeks to target them for speech,” it continued, citing a statement from State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott.
“The United States is under no obligation to allow foreign aliens to come to our country, commit acts of anti-American, pro-terrorist, and antisemitic hate, or incite violence. We will continue to revoke the visas of those who put the safety of our citizens at risk,” Pigott explained.
Meanwhile, Breitbart News reported this week that the State Department emphasized it will continue to revoke visas of foreigners celebrating the horrific assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
According to Axios, the recent lawsuit “targets the State Department’s ‘Catch and Revoke’ program, which ‘includes AI-assisted reviews of tens of thousands of student visa holders’ social media accounts.”
It is important to note that American citizens have been targeted in the past when under Democrat leadership.
During former President Joe Biden’s (D) administration, a secret surveillance initiative the White House managed gave federal, state, and local law enforcement unprecedented access to trillions of American phone records, a move that raised privacy and legal concerns, Breitbart News reported in late 2023:
Known as Data Analytical Services (DAS), this program functions in partnership with telecom giant AT&T, offering a comprehensive analysis of American call records to law enforcement agencies at all levels of government. This deal not only involves direct phone contacts of criminal suspects but extends to their social networks as well, snooping on individuals who have not been suspected of any criminal activity at all.
For over a decade, DAS has been tracking more than a trillion domestic phone records annually. The program, previously referred to as Hemisphere, has evolved to use a technique called chain analysis. This method doesn’t limit itself to direct contacts of suspects; it also scrutinizes connections of those individuals, expanding its reach to a broader network of people, including innocent bystanders.
In June, an Economist/YouGov survey found that a majority of American citizen adults believe the government should be allowed to monitor social media accounts belonging to individuals hoping to immigrate to the United States, per Breitbart News.
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