This can't be legal can it? Wouldn't freedom of speech apply even to non-citizens? Freedom of speech would suggest that I could be pro-Hamas if I wanted to be.

Is this administration really going back to fucking McCarthyism?

> Freedom of speech would suggest that I could be pro-Hamas if I wanted to be

Short answer, yes [1]. The First Amendment prohibits the Congress from passing a law that abridges the freedom of speech. There is no visa exception. That would make such visa terminations unlawful.

(If a student on a visa got themselves arrested, that’s a separate matter.)

[1] https://oiss.yale.edu/campus-community-life/for-students/leg...

Nothing on that page supports what your claim.

In reality even permanent residents could be deported for what would be 1st Amendment protected activity for citizens.

In Harisiades v. Shaughnessy the deportation of legal residents for membership in the Communist party was upheld as Constitutional. This hasn't been overturned or narrowed and remains good law today.

Whether current immigration law allows for this I don't know, but this isn't a 1st Amendment issue based on current precedent.

A site [1] mentions that student visas (F-1) may alter the protections of the first amendment, but doesn't go into any specific detail. Legal or not, if you're deported, it's ruinous, and forcing people to try to litigate against it is a practical win. Sounds like we need anti-SLAPP laws to protect us from the feds now...

[1]: https://www.freedomforum.org/non-citizens-protected-first-am...

I find this administration hateful, but the 1A argument doesn’t quite work: the first amendment doesn’t impart special entitlements on visa holders.

I think a better argument here is to observe that the use of “AI” here is entirely pretextual, as is the connection to the Israel-Palestine conflict. This is purely an action within the existing xenophobic policies of the administration, dressed up against current topics to make that less obvious. The goal is to deport people full stop; these are just “easy” cases to make, and they’re hoping that the next round of people to be deported keep cheering until it’s their turn.

The constitution doesn’t give rights, it puts controls on the behavior of the government. The constitution calls out citizens where necessary.

Your statement about special rights for Visa holders is a nonsequitur

But are tourists and foreign students people? This is a real question, as current interpretation appears they are not.

> The constitution doesn’t give rights, it puts controls on the behavior of the government. The constitution calls out citizens where necessary.

I don't think this is relevant (or even correct, but that doesn't matter). 1A is simply not a right (or "control on the behavior of the government") that applies here: visas are issued at the discretion of the State Department.

Or more simply: I don't think a visa holder could successfully argue that the State Department is obligated to renew their visa solely on 1A grounds. If this isn't the case, then an argument against revoking would fail similarly.

Revocation and renewal are much different things, and if the renewal was mechanical but denied on speech grounds, I do think they would have a case.

> Trump himself hinted at as much during his speech. “The Senate just passed the Take It Down Act,” he said. “Once it passes the House, I look forward to signing that bill into law. And I’m going to use that bill for myself too if you don’t mind, because nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody.”

> Revocation and renewal are much different things

As best I can tell, the State Department exercises the same of rules (enshrined in law) during both renewal and revocation.

The adjacent thread points out that visa eligibility already contains explicit proscriptions around expression: advocating for a designated terrorist group makes one ineligible for a visa, per federal law. I'm not aware of any challenge to that rule that's been mounted on 1A grounds.

(I don't think anything Trump says about the Take It Down Act is relevant here. That's an entirely separate miscarriage of justice that does have 1A relevance.)

Revoking a visa has to cite a legal reason for doing so, such as ineligibility or criminal activity.

1A would obviously be material.

You’re right that it has to cite a legal reason. It happens that one of those legal reasons is endorsing or espousing the views of entities designated by the US as terrorists[1].

But again, I cannot emphasize enough how much all of this is pretextual: the people doing this don’t give a damn about Hamas, or anti-Semitism, or anything else. It’s about deporting people, full stop.

[1]: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-inf...

It wouldn't matter anyway, because it seems one of the tenets of this particular government is:

Sure, there's a law. Try and enforce it.

Unless I'm mistaken, all the agencies with the power to arrest a member of the Executive branch, lie within the Executive branch itself and they are all controlled, or soon will be controlled, by persons appointed by the President. All of these persons are expected to be more faithful to the current President than to the Constitution.

Which means: even if Congress wanted to stop him, there's nothing that it can do to enforce that.

Supreme Court Marshalls can enforce the courts order (and arrest) and answer to the court rather than the executive/ DOJ. Only federal police I can think of outside the executive branch that would have the power to do it.

The Judicial branch has US Probation and Pretrial as an armed internal branch with legal powers.

Thanks, that's a good point.

I wonder what is the process for that finding. Is a court involved?

It should not be unilateral decision by state department.

> I wonder what is the process for that finding. Is a court involved?

My understanding is that the State Department can revoke a visa without any court involvement. There's a waiver process, but that process also entirely sidesteps the courts.

> It should not be unilateral decision by state department.

I agree completely.

Is that even relevant here? It might be 'pro-Hamas' and 'deportation' today. Tomorrow it may become 'pro-liberal' or 'woke' and 'denial of benefits'. This slippery-slope isn't even that farfetched. Is that an acceptable risk?

> Is this administration really going back to fucking McCarthyism?

I mean, it’s what their voters want. Burn the constitution if there’s a chance you can singe a “liberal” in the process.

The only thing any of them fear is being primaried by someone even more strident.

It’d be the twentieth illegal thing this week. So what? What’s anybody gonna do about it?

Visas can be revoked at any time for any reason. USCIS can revoke your visa because the supreme leader doesn't like your haircut and that's probably good enough for SCOTUS.

> In the Court’s opinion, they noted Section 1155 as an absolute confirmation of discretion. USCIS may choose to revoke previously approved visa petitions at any time, for any reason the Secretary and USCIS determine is a “good and sufficient cause.”

https://bizlegalservices.com/2024/12/12/supreme-court-confir...

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/slipopinion/24

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/604us1r03_3f14.p...

Disclaimer: My understanding, IINAL, etc. etc.

> In the Court’s opinion, they noted Section 1155 as an absolute confirmation of discretion

Discretion by the Congress on the President. Congress is still bound by the Constitution.

If they’d cancelled the visas and left the reason blank, that would have probably been legal. By explicitly tying the reason to speech, however, I believe it crosses the line.

Nope. The 1st Amendment (as currently interpreted at least) doesn't protect non-citizens against deportation. See Harisiades v. Shaughnessy

Everything surrounding immigration is a giant gaping hole in the Constitution. The gestapo stops people up to 100 miles from the border, with no probable cause or articulated suspicion that they are even non citizens. Systematically. CBP holds even citizens for basically as long as they like ( yes technically there is some vague directive it be speedy but I can tell you first hand if you ask for a lawyer they'll tell you to get fucked; they take your communication devices too, you have no way to object or record it for evidence).

I think most people don't know HSI is practically as big(ger?) as the FBI, they and CBP goons served as a sort of presidential army rolling into places like Portland taking people in unmarked vans [0].

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/17/892277592/federal-officers-us...

The entire shoreline of the Great Lakes counts as an international border, so literally 100% of Michigan is in the CBP special enforcement zone, and Chicago is basically the same as San Diego or El Paso.

I think international airports can also be considered borders, but maybe the range around them is less?

This reminds me of the time DHS/CBP detained me and jailed me in immigration many times for having gone to Syria, and fought for a militia. Except the hiccup is the militia was a US ally, fighting against the terrorists, and well US high level people also went there to help so they can't go claiming they're terrorists because then they'd be incriminating themselves.

The machine is so bone headed they usually don't even know what the thing they're flagging for actually is. AI will be that on steroids.

Wait, what? You said that like it was so casual. I need to know so much more about this story of yours.

Which militia?

YPG

What could possibly go wrong? There's precedent of software systems messing up and authorities ignoring problems because "the computer said so".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

Australia did their part, too [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme

[1] Mentioning it because I'm still pissed about it.

You're a scammer anyway, published author, techie, on centrelink? You are a grub mate!

Yeah, I'm terrible. Totally my fault that my immune system is eating my nerves, causing widespread damage that will do everything except kill me. I should have chosen not to be born.

I should just give up and end it all, instead of contributing to the world.

Sick or not, you CAN contribute, meaning you don't NEED welfare, scammer!

So... Highly disabled person, is a scammer, for using disability support? I'm verified to safely be able to work 4 hours a week. Any more is permanent damage. Which puts me in the "most disabled" category that Centrelink has.

Do you just want us all to turn around and die, mate? Like the victims of Robodebt?

Yes, that's what they want - or to cage you. They also want homeless people to perish and believe they deserve it for their sins against society

Netanyahu was pro hamas. He propped em up. Go after him

Don’t worry everyone, I am sure the human who labels the training humans will be very judicious.

Is there any hope for America without a revolution?

There is no hope in a violent revolution.

There is we just kill the violent people...

Uh, wasn’t the country founded by a violent revolution?

It worked once but I would no give it much chance now.

Literally control of speech and assembly

"State Department Will Use AI as an excuse to..."

fix the mcdonalds soft serve machines

I hope Hamas starts a university in gaza because there's about to become available many intellects of the highest caliber. This is their chance to usher in a new renaissance.

Gaza has a university since 1978

Original source: https://www.axios.com/2025/03/06/state-department-ai-revoke-...

“Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.”

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

not my problem

Why is this a flagged article?

It implicitly paints the administration, and thus Elon Musk, and thus Silicon Valley bigwigs, in a bad light. Very many of the users of this site will flag anything which does so, under the guise of politics being not of interest to hackers, even as many other users of this site express interest in such conversations. (Even for me to honestly mention this phenomenon is technically against the rules, though.)

How do you know why anyone (except yourself) flags stuff?

I'm not the same person as above, but I feel the same sentiment. There's no hard data, but the pattern of behavior is far too consistent for me to write it off. Plenty of political articles that make it through, but specifically the ones that paint the current US admin as being wrong (even implicitly, by covering their more extreme actions) seem to often accrue a lot of points, shoot up to the front page, and then get flagged - while lots of other political stuff passes through.

It also just lines up with what I observed in HN users before that - the average user seems to be far more likely to be a richer, older, American conservative than any random user on the English internet or even other tech spaces.

You must use the "vouch" feature if you disagree with flaggers

At what level do you gain article vouch privileges?

I think it’s 500 karma and it will only when the article is dead.

You can only vouch [dead] things. The typical progression for these flagged posts is: in good standing -> flagged to [flagged][dead] -> vouched back into good standing -> flagged to [flagged]. The final state requires moderator intervention to unflag.

Welcome to OUR country. If you see your neighbour destroy their home, would you invite them to live with you? Fit in or F-off !

The Land of The Fr--Fitting In.

check out the world cup in qatar, fit in or f-off!

You want Qatar to be your role model?

This is the US, not Israel. Attacking freedom of speech is hardly "fitting in".

Previously on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43285384

The headline should read "State Department will use AI as an excuse for using Israeli intelligence to identify anti-Israel students to deport."

The goal is to silence any criticism of Israel within the United States.

Let's not talk about genocide m'kay?

When Pro-Hamas is often being used to mean critical of Israeli policy. I find this quite concerning. Unfortunately since the two state solution is relatively pro Palestine and equating Palestine with Hamas is so common we'll just call people who want peace terrorist sympathizers I guess.