EXCLUSIVE: US To Deny Visas To Foreign Officials Who Try To Censor US Social Media Platforms
The new policy announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio would also deny visas to “immediate family members” of censorship officials
Since taking office, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has taken a series of actions to push back against growing foreign government demands to censor American citizens and American technology companies like Google, Meta, and X.
In April, Rubio shut down the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), which had funded censorship advocacy by the Global Disinformation Index, a UK-based NGO with ties to the Intelligence Community. Last week, Rubio said the administration was considering sanctions under the Magnitsky Act against Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes for his sweeping censorship edicts.
And on Monday, senior State Department officials traveled to France to raise their concerns about the lawfare against presidential front-runner, Marine Le Pen, and to Ireland to raise their concerns with the “Digital Services Act,” (DSA), the law that allows the EU to censor American citizens and American companies.
Now, the State Department has put in place a policy to deny visas to foreign nationals who are and were involved in the censorship of American citizens, companies, and foreigners in the United States, as well as to their immediate family members, under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
While a State Department official emphasized that this action only applies to a “target class” of visa applicants, and would not suggest any specific application of it, the new rules would allow it to deny a visa to Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Moraes, top DSA officials, their families, and hundreds if not thousands of other foreign officials worldwide.
Other media have reported that Rubio tapped Acting Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, Darren Beattie, to play a key role in free speech diplomacy, which has included shutting down GEC, creating an internal transparency initiative, and developing the new sanctions.
“Obviously, we don’t love the idea of the Europeans censoring their own citizens,” Beattie told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, “but the principal concern is these spillover effects affecting content-moderation policies and a variety of free-speech concerns within the United States. And there’s various mechanisms within the DSA that are concerning in that regard.”
Through the DSA the European Union is trying to set standards for how Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, X and others censor content. The U.S. “is committed to shutting down the global censorship-industrial complex,” a State Department communication seen by the Journal said.
The new policy allows sanctions in the form of visa denial for a variety of attacks on free speech, including if foreign officials threaten to arrest representatives of social media firms, or freeze their assets, as the Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Moraes has done, including most recently against X last year.
The new rule would also allow the State Department to deny visas to foreign officials who demand that US companies follow foreign censorship demands in the form of “content moderation policies,” as the European Union appears poised to do with the DSA.
And the new rules would also sanction foreign officials who threaten to arrest foreign nationals “physically present in the United States” for activity they take on U.S. technology platforms, and who order US tech companies to halt payments to individuals in the United States for things they said online.
The new State Department sanctions reinforce the administration’s view of freedom of expression as a strategic American interest, as well as an instrument of foreign policy. An Executive Order, the “America First Policy Directive,” signed by President Donald Trump in January, declared the foreign policy of the United States to be the protection of core American interests and American citizens.
Internationally, Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Rubio have voiced concerns over censorship by foreign governments. In February, Vance gave a speech in Munich in which he criticized European governments' free speech and lawfare against populist candidates.
In April, Trump revoked the security clearance of a Department of Homeland Security official whose cybersecurity agency oversaw in 2019 and 2020 government-funded NGO schemes to demand censorship of Facebook and X (then-Twitter).
YES! You foreigners attack OUR free speech? Then shove off! You and your censorship are not welcome here!
I voted for this!
Rubio 2028