Outing Immigrants

The Trump administration's intrusive social media rules are a gift to tyrants

Last week, the Instagram account of the U.S. Embassy in Thailand posted an announcement that, effectively immediately, visa applicants would be required to set all their social media profiles to “public.” It was an extension of the Trump administration’s “extreme vetting” policies announced last summer and expanded to a wider range of applicants late last month. The putative goal is to “ensure that those applying for admission into the United States do not intend to harm Americans and our national interests”—a category the administration’s ugly track record makes clear doesn’t just include obvious threats like members of violent extremist groups, but those who engage in political speech the Trump administration dislikes.

State Department efforts to revoke the visas of students who engaged in pro-Palestinian expression have already been excoriated by the courts as a “truly scandalous and unconstitutional suppression of free speech.” Undeterred, the government recently issued guidance urging that speech critical of Israel, supportive of Palestinians, or expression deemed “anti-American” should be considered “overwhelmingly negative” factors in evaluating green card applications.

So far, so bad. But demanding prospective visitors and immigrants set their social media profiles public isn’t just an intrusive policy in service of a constitutionally dubious scheme to exclude people with disfavored political opinions: It is likely to put applicants, their friends, and their families in very real, physical danger.

Since the post above comes from the embassy in Thailand, let’s start there. Thailand notoriously enforces a draconian lèse-majesté law, making it a criminal offense to insult or defame the Thai royal family. In 2024, Thai pro-democracy activist Mongkhon Thirakot (then 30) was sentenced to a gobsmacking 50 years imprisonment for violating the statute, and hundreds of others have been charged under it just since 2020.

Thailand is, of course, hardly unique: There are, alas, plenty of countries where critics of the government, queer folks, and religious nonconformists, among others, can expect to face either direct government retribution or mob violence. Forcing visa applicants to make their social media profiles public means providing not just the U.S., but those authoritarian governments as well with a backlog, potentially stretching back years, of speech that people expected to be private when it was posted—not just the applicants themselves, but potentially also that of the friends, family, and acquaintances who put the “social” in social media.

So visa applicants face a hard choice: They can try to purge or hide accounts with sensitive material, which is likely to constitute a dealbreaker if immigration authorities detect it. They can comply and hope that there’s nothing in that vast backlog they’ve forgotten about that will draw the eye of the wrong authorities—to either themselves or their loved ones. Or they can abandon the process entirely for fear of drawing unwelcome attention. It’s a cruel decision to impose on the very people most in need of the shelter of a country that used to pride itself on being a haven from oppression.