News
Under Trump, Green Card Seekers Face New Scrutiny for Views on Israel
For decades, immigrants who have followed the rules and have not broken the law have had hopes of earning a green card, a document that allows them to live legally in the United States and gain a path to citizenship.
But under new guidance issued by the Trump administration, immigrants can now be denied a green card for expressing political opinions, such as participating in pro-Palestinian campus protests, posting criticism of Israel on social media and desecrating the American flag, according to internal Department of Homeland Security training materials reviewed by The New York Times.
The documents, which have not been previously reported, show how expansively the Trump administration is carrying out a directive from last August to vet green card applicants for “anti-American” and “antisemitic” views.
The administration includes criticism of Israel as a potentially disqualifying factor, with the training materials citing as an example of questionable speech a social media post that declares, “Stop Israeli Terror in Palestine” and shows the Israeli flag crossed out.
The materials were distributed last month to immigration officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security and handles applications for green cards and other forms of legal status.
They reflect how U.S.C.I.S. — long considered the gateway agency for legal migration — has rapidly transformed under President Trump into another cog in his administration’s deportation machine. The agency has worked to strip naturalized Americans of their citizenship and has hired armed federal agents to investigate immigration crimes.
The administration is also granting permanent legal residency to far fewer applicants. Green card approvals have fallen by more than half in recent months, according to a Times analysis of agency data.
“There is no room in America for aliens who espouse anti-American ideologies or support terrorist organizations,” Joseph Edlow, the agency’s director, told Congress in February.
Critics of Mr. Trump’s approach say the administration is seeking to restrict legitimate political speech, and has conflated opposition to Israeli government policies with antisemitism.
Basing green card decisions on “ideological screenings is fundamentally un-American and should have no place in a country built on the promise of free expression,” said Amanda Baran, a senior agency official under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Administration officials said they were defending American values.
“If you hate America, you have no business demanding to live in America,” said Zach Kahler, a spokesman for U.S.C.I.S.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said the administration’s policies had “nothing to do with free speech” and were meant to protect “American institutions, the safety of citizens, national security and the freedoms of the United States.”
The administration has moved aggressively against immigrants for expressing political views that officials have deemed anti-American, making ideology a central part of its immigration vetting process. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revoked the visas of pro-Palestinian student activists, including one who wrote a column criticizing her university’s response to pro-Palestinian demands.
The Department of Homeland Security has proposed reviewing the social media histories of tourists seeking to visit the United States.
Immigration officers have significant discretion in deciding whether to grant foreigners long-term permanent residence. They have long considered a variety of factors, including criminal records, national security threats, family ties to the United States and employment histories.
Ideology has also traditionally been one of those factors. In some cases, U.S. law forbids officers from granting green cards to people who have belonged to a Communist or other “totalitarian” political party, have promoted anarchy or have called for the overthrow of the U.S. government by “force or violence or other unconstitutional means.”
But in the past, immigration officers have focused on statements that could incite or encourage violence, given concerns about infringing on constitutionally protected speech, former U.S.C.I.S. officials said.
The new training materials reviewed by The Times guide immigration officers through the factors they should consider when ruling on green card applications. They discourage officers from granting green cards to people with a history of “endorsing, promoting or supporting anti-American views” or “antisemitic terrorism, ideologies or groups.”
Immigration officers have been told to weigh those factors as “overwhelmingly negative.”
The documents list support for “subversive” ideologies as among other factors that could lead to an application being rejected. As an example, the materials point to someone “holding a sign advocating overthrow of the U.S. government.”
In addition, the guidance describes the desecration of the American flag as a negative factor, citing Mr. Trump’s executive order last year directing the Justice Department to prosecute protesters who burn the flag. The Supreme Court has ruled that flag burning is a form of political expression protected by the First Amendment.
Immigration officers have also been told to scrutinize applicants who encourage antisemitism “through rhetorical or physical actions.” They were instructed to “focus particularly on aliens who engaged in on-campus anti-American and antisemitic activities” after the Hamas attacks against Israel in 2023, the documents show.
Further examples in the documents of conduct characterized as antisemitic include a social media post showing a map of Israel with the nation’s name crossed out and replaced with the word “Palestine.” Another illustrative post suggests that Israelis should “taste what people in Gaza are tasting.”
Immigration officers must elevate all cases involving “potential anti-American and/or antisemitic conduct or ideology” to their managers and to the agency’s general counsel’s office for review, according to the documents.
In recent months, the agency has also changed the way it refers to the employees who adjudicate green card applications, long known as “immigration services officers.” In job postings, it now calls them “homeland defenders.”
“Protect your homeland and defend your culture,” one posting says.
Steven Rich contributed reporting.
Additional work by Jana Tauschinski
Oil and gas tanker location and destination data are from Kpler. The map shows the latest position for vessels with an active AIS signal on April 19–20, filtered by minimum capacity thresholds: crude tankers of at least 50,000 deadweight tonnage (DWT); oil product tankers of at least 55,000 DWT; oil/chemical tankers of at least 40,000 DWT; LNG carriers of at least 150,000 cubic metres; and LPG carriers of at least 50,000 cubic metres. Net fossil fuel import data by country are based on Ember analysis of the IEA World Energy Balances 2023.
A 26-year-old man is facing two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of two University of South Florida doctoral students who went missing last week, local authorities said Saturday.
The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Florida said that evidence presented to the state attorney’s office resulted in the charges against Hisham Abugharbieh, the roommate of Zamil Limon, one of the doctoral students.
Abugharbieh is accused of premediated murder with a weapon. He was arrested on Friday, the same day Limon was found dead.
The family of Nahida Bristy, the other doctoral student, told CBS News that police said she is also likely dead. That is based on the volume of blood discovered at Abugharbieh’s residence, which he shared with Limon.
“Police told us she is no longer with us,” Bristy’s brother, Zahid Prato, said early Saturday.
The family was told her body may never be found and police believe she may have been dismembered, according to Prato.
CBS News has reached out to police for more information.
Authorities said in a statement Saturday they were still searching for Bristy.
Limon’s remains were found on the Howard Franklin Bridge in Tampa Friday morning, Chief Deputy Joseph Maurer with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office said. His cause of death was pending autopsy results.
Deputies with the sheriff’s office took Abugharbieh into custody on Friday after responding to a domestic violence call at a home in the Lake Forest Community, a neighborhood near USF’s Tampa campus, officials said. He also faces charges of domestic violence and evidence tampering, as well as a charge of failing to report a death to law enforcement.
Limon and Bristy, both 27, had last been seen in the Tampa area on April 16.
Limon was studying the use of AI in environmental science and was set to present his doctoral thesis this week, his family said. Bristy is studying chemical engineering.
When President Barack Obama negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran more than a decade ago, his point man was Secretary of State John Kerry. Over 20 months of talks, Mr. Kerry met with his Iranian counterpart on at least 18 different days, often several times per day.
High-level nuclear diplomacy was a natural role for the top U.S. diplomat. Secretaries of state traditionally take the lead on the country’s biggest diplomatic tasks, from arms control treaties to Israeli-Palestinian agreements.
But as President Trump prepares to send a delegation to the latest round of U.S.-Iran talks in Pakistan this weekend, his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, will remain where he often does: at home.
Mr. Rubio did not attend the last U.S. meeting with Iran earlier this month. Nor did he join several meetings held over the past year in Geneva and Doha. Mr. Rubio has also been absent from U.S. delegations abroad working to settle the war in Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza. Despite a long period of crisis and war in the region, he has not visited the Middle East since a brief stop in Israel last October.
In recent months, Mr. Rubio — consumed with his second role, as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser — has not traveled much at all.
During the Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken made 11 foreign trips from January 2024 to late April 2024, stopping in roughly three dozen cities, according to the State Department. So far this year, Mr. Rubio has visited six foreign cities, including a stop in Milan for the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Mr. Trump has outsourced much of his diplomacy to others, including his friend Steve Witkoff, a wealthy associate from the world of Manhattan real estate, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner have spearheaded diplomacy with Israel, Ukraine and Russia, as well as Iran, whose delegation they will meet for the second time this month in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital.
Mr. Rubio’s distance from the trenches of diplomacy reflects his dual role on Mr. Trump’s national security team. For the past year, he has served as the White House national security adviser even while leading the State Department — the first person to do so since Henry A. Kissinger in the mid-1970s.
The secretary of state runs the State Department, overseeing U.S. diplomats and embassies worldwide, as well as Washington-based policymakers. Working from the White House, the national security adviser coordinates departments and agencies, including the State Department, to develop policy advice for the president.
The twin roles reflect Mr. Rubio’s influence with Mr. Trump, and offer him a way to maintain it. For Mr. Rubio, less time abroad means more time at the side of an impulsive president prone to making critical national security decisions at any moment.
As Mr. Witkoff, Mr. Kushner and Vice President JD Vance met with Iranian officials in Pakistan earlier this month, Mr. Rubio was at Mr. Trump’s side at an Ultimate Fighting Championship event, noted Emma Ashford, an analyst of U.S. diplomacy at the nonpartisan Stimson Center in Washington. “Rubio clearly prefers to stay close to Trump,” Ms. Ashford said.
Mr. Rubio accepted the national security adviser job on an acting basis last May after Mr. Trump reassigned the job’s previous occupant, Michael Waltz. But officials say that Mr. Rubio is expected to keep it indefinitely.
That arrangement is not inherently bad, Ms. Ashford added. And she noted that previous presidents had entrusted major diplomatic tasks to people other than the secretary of state. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. delegated his C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, to handle diplomacy with Russia and cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, for instance.
But she echoed the complaints by many current and former diplomats that Mr. Rubio seems less like someone performing both jobs than a national security adviser who sometimes shows up at the State Department. “I do think it’s to the detriment of the whole department of State and to America’s ability to conduct diplomacy in general that we effectively have the secretary of state position sitting vacant,” she said.
Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesman, contested such claims. “Anyone trying to paint Secretary Rubio’s close coordination with the White House and other agencies as a negative could not be more wrong,” he said. “We now have an N.S.C. and State Department that are totally in sync, a goal that has eluded past administrations for decades.”
Mr. Rubio divides his time between the State Department and the White House, often spending time at both in the same day. In an interview with Politico last June, Mr. Rubio said he visited the State Department “almost every day.”
While there, he often meets with visiting dignitaries before returning to the White House. Last week, Mr. Rubio presided over a meeting at the State Department between Lebanese and Israeli officials that set the stage for a cease-fire in Lebanon.
His twin jobs “really do overlap in many cases,” he said. “In many cases you end up being in the same meetings or in the same places; there’s just one less person in there, if you think about it,” Mr. Rubio added. “A lot of people would come to Washington, for example, for meetings, and they’d want to meet with the national security adviser and then meet with me as secretary of state. Now they can do both in one meeting.”
Asked about his travel schedule during a news conference last December, Mr. Rubio said he had less reason to travel abroad because “we have a lot of leaders constantly coming here” to visit Mr. Trump at the White House. Mr. Rubio also joins Mr. Trump’s foreign trips in his capacity as national security adviser.
Many national security veterans call the arrangement unwise, saying that both jobs are extremely demanding and incompatible with one another.
It was not easy even for Mr. Kissinger, who had firmly established himself over more than four years as national security adviser before convincing President Richard M. Nixon to let him take on an additional role as secretary of state in 1973. (In a reversal of Mr. Rubio’s approach, Mr. Kissinger was in constant motion, including a round of Middle East shuttle diplomacy that kept him on the road for 33 straight days.)
“In general, it’s a mistake to combine those roles,” said Matthew Waxman, who held senior roles at the National Security Council, State Department and the Pentagon during the George W. Bush administration.
“That said, it’s not necessarily a bad thing that a dual-hatted Rubio is so offscreen right now,” Mr. Waxman added. “Especially while so much attention is focused on high-wire diplomacy with Iran, someone needs to manage foreign policy around the rest of the world.”
-
Hawaii5 minutes agoClimate disasters strain Hawaii’s insurance with higher rates, coverage gaps – Hawaii Tribune-Herald
-
Idaho11 minutes agoFlags lowered statewide as Idaho honors former Governor Dirk Kempthorne’s life
-
Illinois17 minutes agoDonut shop broken into in Gurnee, Illinois
-
Indiana23 minutes agoCaitlin Clark returns to the court for the Indiana Fever after 9 months out – WTOP News
-
Iowa29 minutes ago
Seahawks Select Iowa Guard Beau Stephens With 148th Overall Pick | 2026 NFL Draft
-
Kansas35 minutes agoThe pick from the Joe Thuney trade has already been spent
-
Kentucky41 minutes ago2026 Kentucky Derby draw results: Presumed favorite Renegade gets dreaded No. 1 spot
-
Louisiana47 minutes agoPipeline blowout reported in St. Helena Parish, authorities say
