FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—President Donald Trump is barring five “agents of the global censorship-industrial complex” from entering the United States, The Daily Signal can first report. 

The State Department has taken steps to impose visa restrictions on five European individuals “whose entry, presence, or activities in the United States have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” 

Two of these, former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton and Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, are subject to deportation. 

“Their conduct may have been legal, and even socially acceptable, in the countries where they operate,” said a State Department document obtain told The Daily Signal. “But censorship is unwelcome in our nation.” 

Breton ordered Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Shou Zi Chew to combat “misinformation” about the Israel-Hamas war on their platforms under an EU law called the Digital Services Act. Ahmad’s CCDH has campaigned for the deplatforming of Trump administration officials and stricter policing of online speech. 

Trump’s FTC chairman notified social media companies that they must not apply the Digital Services Act in the United States because it would impede Americans’ free speech. 

Due to Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s foreign policy determination, the Department of Homeland Security can now initiate removal proceedings against individuals pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which which “renders inadmissible any alien whose entry into the United States the Secretary of State determines “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”     

“President Trump is clear: his America First foreign policy rejects violations of American sovereignty,” the document said. 

The State Department will not tolerate “extraterritorial overreach by foreign censors targeting American speech,” the document said. 

“Under the guise of combatting ‘disinformation’ and ‘defending democracy,’ foreign ideologues—some even living in the United States—have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose,” the official continued. “And, even as the president’s historic administration has rejected and defunded similar censorship efforts domestically, these radical activists and weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by foreign states—in each case targeting American speakers and American companies.” 

The State Department’s move excludes sitting government officials. 

The list of five officials is illustrative, not comprehensive, and the State Department is ready and willing to expand the list if other foreign actors do not reverse course, the official said. 

Certain family members of those whose visas are being revoked may also be covered by these restrictions.  

In February, Vice President JD Vance told The Daily Signal he was in conversations with United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer about free speech violations in the UK. 

“We do have special relationships in the U.K. and also the civilian European allies, but we also know that there have been infringements on free speech that actually affect not just the British,” he said. 

“Of course, what the British do in their own country is up to them, but it also affects American technology companies and, by extension, American citizens,” he continued. “So, that is something that we’ll talk about today.”

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