The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Department opened a proposal to public comment earlier this month that would require immigration forms relating to naturalization or status changes to collect the social media accounts of every applicant. According to the National Register listing, monitoring the social media accounts of non-U.S. citizens is necessary for “enhanced identity verification, vetting and national security screenings.”
The United States already requires applicants to disclose their social media account information in tourist visa forms. The policy proposal says expanding the social media surveillance of noncitizens is necessary to comply with Trump’s “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” executive order, which states that “aliens who threaten the safety or security of the American people” are removable from the country.
Also, earlier this month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials added around 700,000 people with deportation orders to the National Crime Information Center database, which tracks warrants and criminal records. When a police officer begins processing an individual, they will be able to see any deportation order associated with the person and be instructed to notify federal immigration enforcement authorities.
The Guardian has also reported that The Geo Group, a private prison corporation fulfilling surveillance contracts for ICE, is preparing to ramp up operations significantly. While the company tracks around 186,000 immigrants through facial recognition and other technologies, company leaders told The Guardian that the number is expected to reach 450,000 immigrants within the next year because of recent expansions of ICE contracts.
One leader of a Texas-based immigrant rights organization told the Observer recent attempts to increase surveillance on noncitizens could set a dangerous precedent, especially as questions surrounding First Amendment rights begin to emerge. Like the right to due process, the First Amendment protects noncitizens.
“The scary thing about it is that if we, as the American people, allow this to be perpetrated on one population, it is a slippery slope. [If we give up] some of these ‘core’ freedoms of the American experience, you're giving it up for the American people if we play the tape forward,” said the advocate, who asked that he and his organization remain anonymous out of fear of retribution.
Since Trump’s inauguration in January, a number of refugee and immigration-focused organizations have declined to speak with the Observer on the record because they, their employees or their organization’s funding could be targeted.
Monitoring for “National Security Threats”
Already, federal officials have begun citing social media postings as evidence for deportation orders.Last week, Badar Khan Suri, an Indian National and Georgetown University researcher, was arrested outside his Virginia home by ICE agents despite having a visa permitting him to be in the country legally. After Suri’s arrest, Department of Homeland Security Spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the man is deportable even though he has not been charged with a crime, in part because of social media posts that allegedly promote the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas and encourage antisemitism.
The ACLU has filed a lawsuit arguing that Suri’s arrest violates his First Amendment rights, and a federal judge ruled Thursday that Suri may not be removed from the United States unless the court issues a contrary order. “The guardrails of the courts are still relatively working at the moment,” the nonprofit immigration advocate told us, although they may appear “wobbly.”
After all, there is some ambiguity surrounding whether the Trump administration ignored a court order that would have stopped the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelans accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang. The men were flown to a prison known for its harsh conditions in El Salvador. The deportations were made possible by Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has not been used since World War II.
Tattoos used to justify deporting Venezuelans to an El Salvador prison last weekend: the Real Madrid logo, a clock with the time of a daughter's birth, the rainbow-colored ribbon of the autism acceptance movement. pic.twitter.com/TfOtDrleiJ
— Hannah Dreier (@hannahdreier) March 21, 2025
While the Trump administration has claimed each of the deported men were gang members, it is unclear what due process, if any, they were granted.
“To say that anyone can be mistaken for [a member of a] group based upon a set of facts that aren't actually codified in any way, like if you have a [specific] tattoo … what is there to say that you wouldn't just single out another group the next day?” the nonprofit leader said.
He added that each of these measures is part of a broader campaign meant to “fear-monger” among immigrant communities and the U.S. public and that while surveillance measures may be ramping up, the infrastructure supporting them predates the Trump administration.
“A lot of this is also born out of measures that we as the American people empowered our elected officials to take during a period of high vulnerability post-9/11,” he said. “Are the escalations under the Trump administration probably unprecedented, or at least to a greater degree than we've seen in our lifetimes? Yeah, sure. That being said, they also don't exist in a vacuum. They're born out of decades of groundwork here in the U.S. across partisan lines.”
