Trump Administration Proposes Social Media Vetting for Prospective Immigrants
The Trump Administration has announced its intentions to implement a new requirement for individuals seeking to immigrate to the United States, mandating those individuals disclose the entirety of their social media history over the previous five years. In addition to the five-year social media history, the application requests previous phone numbers, email addresses, previous immigration violations, and any familial ties to terrorist organizations. Referring to the measure as “extreme vetting,” the administration expects the measure to affect more than 15 million prospective immigrants including applicants for legal permanent residency. The State Department mentioned the possibility for exemptions to be made for diplomatic and official visas. Opposition to this measure is centered around beliefs of privacy invasion, the potential for bias, and unnecessarily burdening visa applicants which will indirectly limit legal immigration by hindering the speed of the immigration process.
For more information, view the full article.
***
Lawsuit Requests USCIS Release Records After Allegations of Misconduct from Within the Agency and CBP
A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit is seeking answers from United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) regarding treatment of asylum seekers by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, with some asylum officers from within USCIS and CBP also raising questions about mistreatment. The suit was filed by Human Rights Watch and Nixon Peabody LLC and, coming after Human Rights Watch and the American Immigration Counsel filed a FOIA request for records of complaints regarding officers within USCIS’ Asylum Division, asks that CBP release all recorded complaints of misconduct the agency possesses between 2006 and 2015.
Documents that have already been released include an email from an asylum officer to a supervising officer stating that there is reason to believe that there exist, “significant issues in how some Border Patrol officers are screening individuals.” There is also an email in which an incident is discussed where “CBP mocked a transgender woman for hours and refused to record her fear” of returning to her home country; this matches multiple complaints filed against the agency during the same time-period. Another email from an asylum officer indicated that a prospective asylum seeker was coerced into the withdrawal of his asylum request, stating that, “What is especially disturbing about this is that… the record indicates that [the asylum seeker] had been subjected to harassment, intimidation, and physical mistreatment by CBO upon his recent entry into the United States and this mistreatment… affected his decision to dissolve his case.”
For more information, view the full article.
Disclaimer: This newsletter is provided as a public service and not intended to establish an attorney client relationship. Any reliance on information contained herein is taken at your own risk.