The State Department is planning to bolster its efforts to vet and screen the social media of those applying for international student and exchange visitor visas to ensure applicants don’t pose a national security threat to the U.S., Fox News Digital has learned. 

To do this, the State Department is temporarily suspending new student and exchange visitor visa interviews as it evaluates enhanced social media screenings for the application process. 

The effort is the latest initiative from the Trump administration to crack down on immigration and revoke visas of those attending academic institutions in the U.S. Those who’ve publicly supported Palestine have faced increased scrutiny, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in May that the administration was reviewing the visa status of students who participated in pro-Palestine protests. 

The Trump administration has accused students who’ve participated in these protests of supporting Hamas — a designated foreign terrorist organization. 

The State Department is currently examining existing operations that go into screening and vetting student and exchange visa applications, and "based on that review, plans to issue guidance on expanded social media vetting for all such applicants," according to a Tuesday email obtained by Fox News Digital. 

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As a result, the State Department is instructing consular sections to pause adding any additional student or exchange visitor visa appointment capacity until further guidance is issued, "in preparation for an expansion of required social media screening and vetting," the email said. 

"The next step is for posts to evaluate operations and processes in preparation for this expanded social media vetting of all student and exchange visitor (F, M, J) visa applicants," said the email.

"Appointments already scheduled can proceed under current guidelines," the email said. "However, appointments that are available, but not taken as of the release of this cable, should be immediately removed from availability." 

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The email does not specify what additional steps would be involved in the more stringent social media screening process, but says that consular offices have been instructed to refer certain student and exchange visitor visa applicants to the Fraud Prevention Unit for a "mandatory social media check." 

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital on what the existing social media policy is for applicants. 

Meanwhile, Rubio told lawmakers May 20 that he expects that the State Department has already pulled thousands of visas since January following President Donald Trump’s inauguration. That’s up from the 300 the administration had revoked as of late March. 

Rubio also said that his agency would continue to pull student visas, stating that a visa is not a right, it’s a "privilege." 

"I don't know the latest count, but we probably have more to do," Rubio told lawmakers on the Senate appropriations subcommittee overseeing foreign affairs. "We're going to continue to revoke the visas of people who are here as guests and are disrupting our higher education facilities."

Meanwhile, Democrats have said that the Trump administration's effort to revoke visas is a violation of due process.

"I do think it's a fundamental attack on freedom, because due process is the guardian of the gate to keep a government from taking away people's life or liberty, and liberty is what happens when you take away a visa without due process," Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., told Rubio May 20. 

A student visa allows those outside the U.S. to study in the country for a specific amount of time at an academic institution. In contrast, a green card allows an individual already in the U.S. who is not an American citizen to remain in the country. 

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The State Department’s effort aligns with executive orders that Trump signed in January to protect the U.S. from foreign terrorists and other national security threats, as well as one that aims to combat antisemitism, a senior State Department official told Fox News Digital. 

One of the executive orders instructs the State Department, as well as the Department of Homeland Security, the attorney general, and the director of national intelligence, to "vet and screen to the maximum degree possible all aliens who intend to be admitted, enter, or are already inside the United States, particularly those aliens coming from regions or nations with identified security risks." 

Additionally, the other executive order states that the U.S. will use "all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence."

The U.S.’s chief adversaries, Russia, North Korea and China, all of which are nuclear-armed nations, have condemned President Donald Trump’s space-based defensive plan he dubbed the "Golden Dome" as "dangerous" and a threat to global stability. 

The president discussed his $175 billion plan, which will use satellites and other technologies to detect and intercept a missile strike "even if they are launched from other sides of the world," Trump said last week.

The defensive plan, though it is believed to be years away before being fully operational despite Trump’s three-year goal mark, sparked stiff backlash from the U.S.’s top competitors, who took direct aim at what they called Trump’s "arrogance."

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North Korea’s foreign ministry, whose leader shared an uncommonly cordial relationship with Trump during his first term, called it the equivalent of an "outer space nuclear war scenario" that supports the administration’s strategy for "uni-polar domination."

According to local media outlets, the ministry on Tuesday said it was a "typical product of ‘America first’, the height of self-righteousness, arrogance, high-handed and arbitrary practice."

The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News’ Digital’s questions regarding the reactions to the plan, intended to resemble Israel’s "Iron Dome" defensive capability.

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But the North Korean foreign ministry claimed the defensive strategy was actually an "attempt to militarize outer space" and "preemptively attain military superiority in an all-round way."

Similarly, on Tuesday, Russian foreign minister Maria Zakharova said the strategy would undermine the basis of strategic stability by creating a global missile defense system, reported Reuters. 

But her comments were not the first time Moscow aligned its condemnation of the "Golden Dome" as it issued a joint statement with China earlier this month after Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping met for formal talks in Russia.

The duo called the plan "deeply destabilizing" and claimed it erodes the "inseparable interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms."

They also argued that it would turn "outer space into an environment for placing weapons and an arena for armed confrontation."

Russia has remained relatively muted in its response following Trump’s Oval Office discussion on the Golden Dome, which came just two days after Trump held a two-hour phone call with Putin. 

But China reiterated its objection to the plan, and following Trump’s announcement on it, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning said last week, "The project will heighten the risk of turning space into a war zone and creating a space arms race, and shake the international security and arms control system."

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has rejected the claims that the plan could be viewed as an "offensive" strategy and told Fox News Digital, "All we care about is protecting the homeland."

Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.