Three major labor unions sued the federal government on Thursday to stop a sweeping social media surveillance program designed to revoke the visas and green cards of immigrants who hold “hostile attitudes” about the government.

The unions say the AI-powered “catch and revoke” program has suppressed the free speech of their members, including graduate students who have been targeted by the State Department for expressing pro-Palestine views.

The First Amendment applies to everyone who lives in the U.S., the lawsuit filed on the unions’ behalf by three civil liberties groups notes. Other lawsuits have challenged visa revocations, but this is the first to take on the surveillance program itself, said Lisa Femia, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that works on digital privacy and is part of the plaintiffs’ legal team.

“We are the first challenging the surveillance program that is upstream of the immigration enforcement actions, that is both leading to negative enforcement actions, that is also at a broad scale suppressing and chilling speech of many, many people, both non-citizens and citizens alike,” Femia told The Intercept.

The plaintiffs in the case are the United Automobile Workers, the Communications Workers of America, and the American Federation of Teachers.

Defendants in the case include Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, their agencies, and the U.S. government. (The State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)

The unions are seeking a judge’s order halting the surveillance program, which would deal the Trump administration a major setback in its attempt to weaponize the immigration enforcement system against people whose views it disfavors.

© The Intercept