How Student Protesters and Immigrants Became Targets of Trump’s Surveillance Tech
The Intercept Briefing
The Intercept
4.8 • 6.3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 May 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“Catch and revoke” — the phrase sounds like something from a dystopian thriller, but it's Secretary of State Marco Rubio's very real characterization of the Trump administration's new one-strike visa cancellation policy targeting foreign students. A State Department spokesperson said that "full social media vetting" will be used for visa interviews and will be ongoing while the student remains in the U.S. for studies.
On this week's episode of The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks to anthropologist Sophia Goodfriend and Chris Gelardi, a reporter for New York Focus investigating surveillance and the criminal legal system. They unpack how AI and surveillance technology are being weaponized to silence dissent on American campuses and fuel the deportations of immigrants nationwide.
"In the past few months, as we see the expansion of government surveillance, the crackdown of ICE on both legal residents and undocumented people in this country, we see these technologies lending a veneer of algorithmic efficiency to increasingly draconian policies," says Goodfriend.
To understand more about the tech infrastructure powering deportations and what this digital crackdown means for everyone, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
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Transcript
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| 0:35.9 | Welcome to the Intercept Briefing. |
| 0:38.5 | I'm Akala Lacey. |
| 0:40.2 | Catch and revoke. |
| 0:42.3 | That's what Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has dubbed the department's new one-strike visa cancellation policy. |
| 0:50.3 | What I do is revoke visas. |
| 0:52.1 | It's part of a sweeping effort to criminalize dissent, especially among foreign students protesting |
| 0:58.6 | Israel's war on Gaza. |
| 1:00.7 | Back in March, the department unveiled plans for a catch and revoke effort to accelerate |
| 1:05.8 | visa cancellations. |
| 1:07.3 | With the help of AI, the department wants to scour the social media accounts of |
| 1:11.7 | tens of thousands of foreign students and deport anyone they label a terrorist. And now, |
| 1:18.3 | according to a cable obtained by Politico, the Trump administration is pausing foreign student |
| 1:23.1 | visa interviews until applicants undergo a full social media vetting. But it doesn't stop there. |
| 1:30.1 | There's an entire surveillance network powering deportations. It's built on decades of collaboration |
| 1:36.4 | between U.S. tech companies and the security state here and around the world. It's Palantir's |
| 1:43.7 | Immigration OS, its AI-powered license plate readers, |
... |
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