The Trump administration is increasingly turning to social media as a national security tool to vet immigrants, stoking concerns the move could have a chilling effect on political speech in the U.S.

The State Department announced last week it is restarting interviews and processing foreign student visas, and applicants will now be required to make their social media accounts public for vetting or face potential denial.

The agency said it is looking for those “who pose a threat to U.S. national security,” but critics say the criteria is broad and blurs the line between national surveillance and public expression, especially on private social media accounts.

“This is new, it’s unprecedented,” said Greg Nojeim, the senior counsel and director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

“It’s never before been the case that a person who had set their social media account to private would have to set it to public in order to be admitted to the United States,” he said.

The U.S. government has expanded its monitoring of social media over the past decade, but the Trump administration’s latest focus on student visas marks a new escalation of this practice.

Social media checks have “become more pervasive and ideologically driven over time,” the think tank Brennan Center for Justice wrote in a report this year.

Social media vetting begins at State Department

Under guidance announced last week, consular officers will conduct a “comprehensive and thorough vetting,” including of the online presence of all student and exchange visitor applicants, a State Department spokesperson told The Hill last week.

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