April 9 (UPI) — The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday said it immediately will begin screening visa applicants’ social media for “antisemitic activity” and will deny violators.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will begin considering antisemitic activity “and the physical harassment of Jewish individuals as grounds for denying immigration benefit requests,” according to a news release.

Immediately, this policy will affect those applying for permanent resident “green cards, and student and work visas.

“There is no room in the United States for the rest of the world’s terrorist sympathizers, and we are under no obligation to admit them or let them stay here,” DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said. “Secretary [Kristi] Noem has made it clear that anyone who thinks they can come to America and hide behind the First Amendment to advocate for anti-Semitic violence and terrorism — think again. You are not welcome here.”

DHS said this policy is consistent with President Donald Trump‘s executive orders on Combatting Anti-Semitism, Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism and Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats.

“DHS will enforce all relevant immigration laws to the maximum degree, to protect the homeland from extremists and terrorist aliens, including those who support antisemitic terrorism, violent antisemitic ideologies and antisemitic terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, or Ansar Allah aka: ‘the Houthis,'” according to a news release.

USCIS said it will consider social media content that indicates a nonresident “endorsing, espousing, promoting, or supporting antisemitic terrorism, antisemitic terrorist organizations, or other antisemitic activity as a negative factor in any USCIS discretionary analysis when adjudicating immigration benefit requests.”

Social media platforms were not mentioned in the release. The biggest ones are Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTak, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, LinkedIn, Telegram and Bluesky.

The move comes as recent arrests and detentions of pro-Palestinian student activists, including Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, who the government alleges engaged in antisemitic activities. Their attorneys deny the allegations.

Civil rights and Muslim groups responded negatively.

“The spirit of Joseph McCarthy is alive and well in the Trump administration, which has spent months dishonestly mischaracterizing legitimate criticism of the Israeli government’s war crimes in Gaza as antisemitic, pursuing witch hunts into American colleges, and threatening the free speech rights of immigrants,” Edward Ahmed Mitchell, the national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement. “The Trump administration must stop shredding the First Amendment for the benefit of Benjamin Netanyahu‘s racist, genocidal government.”

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J-Street, a Washington group described as pro-Israel, pro-peace and pro-democracy, told NPR: “The fight against antisemitism won’t be advanced by attacks on 250-year-old cherished American rights like free speech.”

He added: “The Trump administration’s own appointees have social media accounts riddled with antisemitism, demonstrating how insincere they are in claiming their totalitarian attacks on higher education and immigrants will make Jewish Americans safer and that they are motivated by genuine concern for our wellbeing.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression wrote on X: “By surveilling visa and green card holders and targeting them based on nothing more than their protected expression, the administration trades America’s commitment to free and open discourse for fear and silence. Unfortunately, that chill appears to be the administration’s aim.”

The Anti-Defamation League didn’t react on its website or social media but it has advocated for federal, state and local officials to combat antisemitism, and has challenged hate in the courts.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on March 28 more than 300 visas had been revoked after a cable was sent to consulates around the world about checking social media for foreign students and student exchange visitors. He said they should be denied if their applications for visas are inconsistent with their visa classifications.

The announcement came as the Trump administration has been pulling funding from universities amid widespread protests over the war between Israel and militant Hamas in Gaza, including Ivy League schools Columbia, Harvard, Cornell, Princeton and Brown, as well as Northwestern, also a private school.