Catch & Revoke: How Trump’s AI is Silencing Student Activism

Written by Morgan McCann

Introduction

Following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and Israel’s devastating military reply—which has killed around 69,513 Palestinians and injured over 170,000—U.S. university campuses saw widespread pro-Palestinian protests calling for ceasefire and divestment.¹ In response, the Trump administration has conflated pro-Palestine activism with support for Hamas, antisemitism, and anti-American extremism.² In March 2025, building on this narrative, the State Department launched the “Catch and Revoke” initiative, which uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to scrape social media and identify “foreign nationals who appear to support Hamas or other designated terror groups.”³ These individuals then became targets for student visa cancellations.⁴ In practice, the initiative disproportionately targets foreign students engaged in peaceful advocacy, not terrorism.⁵ Critics argue that the AI tools are to blame because they rely on basic keyword searches that produce biased, discriminatory, and false results.⁶

The U.S. has violated Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) by failing to uphold the right to freedom of expression for all people within its territory.⁷ Although Article 19(3) provides a national security exception to this obligation, General Comment No. 34 provides that any restriction on freedom of expression must be (a) provided by law, (b) necessary, (c) proportionate, and (d) pursuing a legitimate aim.⁸ Nevertheless, the lack of formal AI regulations and independent oversight of the “Catch and Revoke” initiative make it extremely difficult for the U.S. to meet the requirements for this exception.⁹

Background

Many advocacy groups believe that the faulty “Catch and Revoke” initiative has already resulted in hundreds of arrests and student visa revocations of peaceful protestors.¹⁰ For instance, Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident of the U.S. and a Palestinian Columbia University student activist both online and offline, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on March 8, 2025.¹¹ The agents were ordered by the State Department to revoke Khalil’s student visa, despite him having no student visa to revoke and no ties to terrorism, illustrating the discriminatory nature of the AI tools.¹² Additionally, Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman with no record of campus activism and no online content related to Palestine, was detained after being misidentified as a Columbia protester, indicating that the AI likely misidentified her based on ethnicity and flawed keyword association.¹³ These arrests along with others have created a chilling effect, where foreign students avoid protests and censor their speech for fear of detention or deportation.¹⁴ The U.S. frames this restriction on freedom of expression as necessary for national security but is unable to meet the ICCPR requirements for this exception.

Analysis

A. Provided by Law

The ICCPR requirement that a restriction on freedom of expression must be provided by law demands that the law be compatible with ICCPR objectives, to protect and preserve basic civil and political rights.¹⁵ The law must also provide sufficient guidance to enable an individual to regulate their conduct accordingly.¹⁶ Lastly, the law is only valid when provided by parliament or sanctioned by a court.¹⁷

Two Trump executive orders form the basis of the “Catch and Revoke” initiative.¹⁸ The first directed the State Department to “vet and screen” all foreign nationals already in the U.S. and authorized visa revocation under the vague “foreign policy consequences” provision of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act.¹⁹ The second linked pro-Palestine campus protests to antisemitism, enabling immigration consequences for students participating in such activism.²⁰ First, these orders are incompatible with ICCPR objectives because they effectively criminalize political advocacy.²¹ Furthermore, the executive orders lack clear guidance for individuals to understand what speech may lead to visa revocation and were not passed by Congress or a court.²² However, with proper AI regulations, such as human oversight and transparency mechanisms, that do not conflate being pro-Palestine with being pro-Hamas, Trump could seek congressional approval to create valid laws that support the initiative’s goal of targeting terrorist sympathizers and fulfill the provided by law requirement.

B. Necessary

Without formal AI regulations, the U.S. does not meet the necessity requirement because it cannot show that the protection achieved by its restriction could not be achieved in other ways that do not restrict freedom of expression.²³ An alternative measure could be AI-based investigations of visa applicants who have actual links to designated terror groups, instead of broad categories of already-approved students.²⁴ Thus, if the U.S. adopted formal AI regulations and oversight mechanisms, the “Catch and Revoke” initiative could effectively monitor social media in a way that achieved national security protection without infringing on human rights.

C. Proportional

To demonstrate proportionality, restrictive measures must not be overbroad, but rather “must be appropriate to achieve their protective function; they must be the least intrusive instrument amongst those which might achieve their protective function; [and] they must be proportionate to the interest to be protected.”²⁵ Instead of focusing on individuals with actual ties to extremist groups, the current broad initiative sweeps up thousands of students based on vague signals.²⁶ The initiative disproportionately targets Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian individuals,²⁷ misinterprets political dissent as support for terrorism,²⁸ and generates false positives due to unsophisticated keyword scanning.²⁹ However, if the AI was better restricted and monitored, the bias, discriminatory, and false nature of the initiative could be corrected so that the U.S. could meet the proportionality requirement.

D. Legitimate Aim

To meet the legitimate aim requirement, the U.S.’s restriction on freedom of expression must not suppress information of legitimate public interest; however, that is exactly what the “Catch and Revoke” initiative is intended to do.³⁰ Although the initiative is framed as protecting national security and combating antisemitism, its actual function is to silence political criticism of U.S. foreign policy and Israel’s military conduct.³¹ Students are calling for an end to civilian suffering in Gaza, a matter of urgent public concern, and suppressing such speech is incompatible with international human rights norms.³² If the U.S. genuinely desired to use the “Catch and Revoke” initiative to identify and revoke the visas of national security threats, formal AI regulations and independent oversight are necessary to ensure that fundamental human rights are not ignored.

Conclusion

The “Catch and Revoke” initiative violates Article 19 of the ICCPR and the fundamental right to freedom of expression. Without formal AI regulation, transparency, accountability, and oversight, the U.S. cannot justify the program as a national security measure. Unless checked, this model may invite other states to deploy AI to suppress dissent, undermining international human rights protections globally.

Posted in Blog

Written by Morgan McCann

Share this post

Contact Us

Join Our Mailing List