The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is building tools to examine social media accounts of visa applicants as well as those seeking asylum or refugee status in the US for possible terrorism ties. At a congressional hearing last month, Francis X. Taylor, Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, the top counterterrorism official at DHS, said after the mass shooting in San Bernardino “we saw that our efforts are not as robust as they need to be,” and therefore would start to examine posts on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites.

This DHS announcement comes after terrorist groups, most prominently the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, have been increasingly successful in using social media sites to spread propaganda, encourage independent terrorist attacks, and as a recruitment tool. Previous to DHS’s announcement, Senator John McCain introduced a bill that would require the DHS to screen social media sites for refugees and those visiting or immigrating to the US, and Representative Vern Buchanan has additionally introduced a bill mirroring McCain's that requires the DHS to examine all public records, including “Facebook and other forms of social media,” as part of the routine security background check.

“This legislation adds an important and necessary layer of screening that will go a long way in properly vetting the online activities of those wishing to enter the United States,” Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told the New York Times. “A simple check of social media accounts of foreign travelers and visa applicants will help ensure that those who have participated in, pledged allegiance to or communicated with terrorist organizations cannot enter the United States.” While Congress has yet to act on the proposed legislation, in December, twenty-two Democratic lawmakers urged DHS to examine social media accounts for those seeking US visas.

Melanie Nezer, Vice President for Policy & Advocacy at HIAS, an agency that assists in refugee resettlement, commented to the New York Times about DHS’s social media plans: “We haven’t seen the policy, but it is a concern considering the already lengthy and opaque process that refugees have to go through. It could keep out people who are not a threat.” The American Civil Liberties Union of Maine agreed, telling WMTW News, an ABC affiliate: “We already have a rigorous and multi-layered security screening program in place for refugee resettlement that works. This proposal will only serve to further stigmatize immigrants and divide our country."

DHS’s new plan to review social media accounts comes after they abandoned a similar proposal in 2011. Currently, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency of DHS, examines social media accounts as part of the screening process for certain Syrian refugees, but only when there is a "hit" in an intelligence database for the applicant or if there is a security concern stemming from the interview with immigration officials. DHS says they are now hoping to automate the social media review, as a huge amount of messages and other data will need to be processed, as well as make additional hires to conduct the necessary social media security checks.

While data mining experts such as John Elder, who has worked with the Internal Revenue Service and the Postal Service on fraud detection, believe that analyzing social media accounts of millions of people who enter the US each year is feasible, other stress that conducting a thorough and accurate review would be very difficult. David Heyman, a former Assistant Secretary of Policy for DHS, told the New York Times: “You have to be careful how you design the proposal to screen people,” he said. “Artificial intelligence and algorithms have a poor ability to discern sarcasm or parody.”

After the horrific recent terrorist attacks and bombings by the Islamic State, or ISIS, world leaders at the G20 summit in Turkey are not only discussing their joint response to the global threat posed by ISIS but also the supposed fear of terrorists infiltrating the stream of migrants fleeing into the EU and elsewhere. This fear was sparked by the discovery of a Syrian refugee passport found near or on the body of one suicide bomber in Paris and has led many to speculate on the danger in accepting Syrians and refugees of other nationalities, even though there are still many unanswered questions about who the passport belonged to, whether it was stolen, and other key details.

The Most Vulnerable

EU chief Jean-Claude Juncker said in the Guardian: “We should not mix the different categories of people coming to Europe. The one responsible for the attacks in Paris…he is a criminal and not a refugee and not an asylum seeker.” At the G20 summit, President Obama said: "The people who are fleeing Syria are the most harmed by terrorism. They are the most vulnerable as a consequence of civil war and strife. They are parents. They are children. They are orphans and it is very important...that we do not close our hearts to these victims of such violence and somehow start equating the issue of refugees with the issue of terrorism."

If there is no end to the Syrian civil war, the EU is predicting that as many as three million refugees will arrive in the next year. UK Prime Minister David Cameron has proposed that more refugees be given jobs and education in the semi-permanent camps on the border of Syria to discourage them from making the dangerous journey to the EU. Poland’s new government has already stated they won’t accept the EU migrant quotas. “In the wake of the tragic events in Paris, Poland doesn’t see the political possibilities to implement a decision on the relocation of refugees,” Konrad Szymanski, the nation’s future minister for European affairs, was quoted as saying on Wpolityce.pl website. “The attacks mean there’s a need for an even deeper revision of the European policy regarding the migrant crisis.”

Anti-Refugee Backlash

As EU leaders continue to deal with the influx of Syrian migrants, many are fearing an anti-immigrant and refugee backlash, including in Germany which has taken in the majority of Syrian refugees and has seen a dramatic surge in attacks against migrants and refugee shelters. American Muslim communities are also fearing a backlash after the Paris attacks.

In the US meanwhile, more than twenty-five states have declared they will not accept the resettlement of Syrian refugees, even though the security vetting process can take approximately twenty-four months, and many states have yet to receive any refugees. One South Carolina town even preemptively passed a resolution against the resettlement of refugees in their county limits, even though no Syrian refugees have been resettled in the entire state. The move to not accept Syrian refugees is more symbolic, given that out of the millions fleeing their country’s civil war, only 2,000 Syrian refugees have been granted entrance to the US in the past four years; moreover, it is unclear what effect these announcements will have, since it is President Obama not state governors who “has explicit statutory authorization to accept foreign refugees into the United States.” House Republicans are also creating a task force on Syrian refugees to pursue possible legislation to "pause" the flow of refugees into the US.

Religious Test for Refugees?

In a slightly different proposal, presidential candidates Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz suggested that the US prioritize and accept only Christian Syrian refugees, a move which President Obama condemned. “When I hear political leaders suggesting that there should be a religious test for admitting which person fleeing which country,” Obama said in the Guardian, “when some of these folks themselves come from other countries, that’s shameful. That’s not America. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.”