On May 5, 2025, the Brennan Center and Knight First Amendment Institute submitted comments to U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which is a part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The comments urge DHS to abandon its proposal to collect social media identifiers from more than three million people applying for immigration benefits each year, along with—under some circumstances—those of their minor children, spouses and former spouses, and parents and stepparents. Many of the people whose social media identifiers DHS proposes to collect are U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, or individuals who otherwise have legal status and are physically present in the United States.
The White House office responsible for approving federal regulations previously rejected an identical proposal, underscoring that it did not meet legal requirements that require the government to demonstrate the “practical utility” of collecting this information.
In our comments, we highlight the absence of any evidence that social media screening is useful for vetting people. We also reiterate our objections to the government’s collection and screening of social media information on a number of grounds, including the chilling of the rights to free expression and association guaranteed by the First Amendment and the disparate deployment, impact, and intrusiveness of these practices. Our concerns about these damaging impacts only grow with the proposed extension of these practices to U.S. citizens and residents, in an environment where people increasingly rely on social media as a primary channel for self-expression, organizing, and engaging with politics, particularly in light of declarations from the administration that it is retaliating against people for their political speech.
