DHS training tells USCIS officers to weigh flag-burning, criticism of Israel, and pro-Palestinian protest against green-card applicants

The training materials, as reported by The New York Times on April 25, 2026 and corroborated by Democracy Now! and IBTimes UK two days later, instruct U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services adjudicators to treat applicants' political speech as a discretionary negative factor when deciding green-card and other immigration-benefit cases. The guidance names three categories of speech as triggers: desecration of the U.S. flag, criticism of the state of Israel, and participation in pro-Palestinian campus protest activity. Officers are directed to escalate any case involving "potential anti-American and/or antisemitic conduct or ideology" to USCIS managers and the agency's general counsel's office. The materials cite three illustrative social- media posts as "questionable speech" — a graphic reading "Stop Israeli Terror in Palestine" with the Israeli flag crossed out, a map relabeling Israel as "Palestine," and a post suggesting Israelis should "taste what people in Gaza are tasting."

The training operationalizes a USCIS Policy Manual change announced on August 19, 2025, which formally added "anti-American activity" as an "overwhelmingly negative factor in any discretionary analysis." The training materials had not been previously published by DHS or USCIS; the New York Times' report is their first public exposure. Officers are further directed to "focus particularly on aliens who engaged in on-campus anti-American and antisemitic activities," a provision legal analysts say will sweep up students who joined pro-Palestinian campus protests following October 2023. Desecration of the U.S. flag is listed as a negative factor despite the Supreme Court's ruling in Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989), establishing flag-burning as First Amendment-protected speech.

The Standing records this entry under two abuses. Targeting critics with government power tracks the use of an immigration-benefit adjudication — a discretionary government power — as a tool to disadvantage applicants on the basis of their political viewpoint, in particular criticism of a foreign government's policies and participation in lawful protest. Discriminatory policy tracks the viewpoint- and association-based standard the training establishes: because the rule is discretionary rather than rule-based and lacks any statutory definition of "anti-Americanism," two applicants with identical posts may receive different outcomes, and there is no appeal mechanism for a discretionary denial. The policy formalizes a shift from conduct-based to opinion-based grounds for denying an immigration benefit, and the training instructs officers to apply it to pending cases, meaning posts predating any of these rules can be pulled into a current adjudication. Closely related but distinct from The Standing's tracking of USCIS Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199 (monitoring issue #132, May 21, 2026) and from the April 13, 2026 ICE detention of Iranian Ph.D. student Yousof Azizi (entry issue #145) — same family of abuse, distinct events.