Trump administration orders enhanced vetting of all Harvard University-linked visa applicants

By Humeyra Pamuk

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. State Department ordered all its consular missions overseas to begin additional vetting of visa applicants looking to travel to Harvard University for any purpose, according to an internal cable seen by Reuters on Friday, in a move that significantly expands President Donald Trump's crackdown against the academic institution.

In a cable dated May 30 and sent to all U.S. diplomatic and consular posts, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio instructed the immediate start of "additional vetting of any non-immigrant visa applicant seeking to travel to Harvard University for any purpose."

Such applicants include but are not limited to prospective students, students, faculty, employees, contractors, guest speakers, and tourists, the cable said. The word "any" in the cable text is written in bold format and underlined.

Harvard University failed to maintain "a campus environment free from violence and anti-Semitism", the cable said, and that the enhanced vetting measures were aimed at helping consular officers identify visa applicants "with histories of anti-Semitic harassment and violence."

While the U.S. has previously required additional vetting of visa applicants from particular countries, applying such procedures against Harvard appears to be an unprecedented use of the visa process against a university that has fallen out of favor with the administration.

The additional measures for Harvard-linked applicants were first reported by Fox News, but the cable itself has not been previously reported.

The State Department does not comment on its internal documents or communications, a department spokesperson said in an email when asked about the cable.

The Trump administration has launched a multifront attack on the nation's oldest and wealthiest university, freezing billions of dollars in grants and other funding, proposing to end its tax-exempt status and opening an investigation into whether it discriminated against white, Asian, male or straight employees or job applicants.

Trump alleges top U.S. universities are cradles of anti-American movements. In a dramatic escalation, his administration last week revoked Harvard's ability to enroll foreign students, a move later blocked by a federal judge.

Harvard argues the Trump administration is retaliating against it for refusing to accede to its demands to control the school's governance, curriculum and the ideology of its faculty and students.

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The move is also part of the Trump administration's intensifying immigration crackdown and follows Rubio's order to stop scheduling new appointments for student and exchange visitor visa applicants.

The top U.S. diplomat also said earlier this week that Washington will start revoking the visas of Chinese students with links to the Chinese Communist Party and those who are studying in critical areas.

Implementation of this order will also serve as a "pilot for expanded screening and vetting of visa applicants," the cable adds, raising the possibility of the measures taken against Harvard and visa applicants being used as a template for other universities.

The order also directs consular officers to consider questioning the credibility of the applicant if the individual's social media accounts are private, as that may be reflective of "evasiveness," and instructs them to ask applicants to set their accounts to public.

The officers can remind the applicant that "limited access to or visibility of social media activity could be construed as an effort to evade or hide certain activity," the cable said.

The cable instructs the consular officers to consider any information about the applicant that does not raise to the level of inadmissibility to ensure that the applicant's claimed purpose of travel is consistent with the visa they are seeking.

"If you are not personally and completely satisfied that the applicant, during his time in the United States, will engage in activities consistent with his non-immigrant visa status, you should refuse the visa...," the cable said.

Such a recommendation would follow comments from Rubio in recent months saying he has personally revoked the visas of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, including students, because they got involved in activities that go against U.S. foreign policy priorities.

"If you’re coming here to create problems, you’re probably going to have a problem," Rubio told reporters on April 7. "We’re not going to continue to be stupid enough to let people into our country who are coming here to tear things up."

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Editing by Franklin Paul and Andrea Ricci)