Five months before President Trump came to office vowing “extreme vetting” for immigrants, the Obama administration added social media checks to a program that scrutinizes persons from majority-Muslim nations, newly obtained internal documents show.
Social-media screening at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Servicescollectively encompassed aspiring immigrants such as asylees and refugees, and even some visa-holders currently in the United States. The effort going back five years had produced little actionable intelligence, according to multiple internal reviews obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Nevertheless, that hasn’t stopped the Trump administration’s plans to build off of the program that one critic likened to a “digital Muslim ban.”