The re­cent killing of US con­ser­v­a­tive po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Char­lie Kirk has stirred re­ac­tions across the po­lit­i­cal spec­trum. But for those cel­e­brat­ing his death on­line, the Unit­ed States is mak­ing it clear: they are not wel­come in the coun­try.

In a post to X (for­mer­ly Twit­ter), US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio said, “Amer­i­ca will not host for­eign­ers who cel­e­brate the death of our fel­low cit­i­zens. Visa re­vo­ca­tions are un­der way. If you are here on a visa and cheer­ing on the pub­lic as­sas­si­na­tion of a po­lit­i­cal fig­ure, pre­pare to be de­port­ed. You are not wel­come in this coun­try.”

Speak­ing with the me­dia on Mon­day in Is­rael, Ru­bio clar­i­fied that the US has been deny­ing visa ap­pli­ca­tions, but no visas have been re­voked for for­eign­ers al­ready in the coun­try. Hold­ers of non-im­mi­grant visas, in­clud­ing tourists and stu­dents, are re­port­ed­ly sub­ject to en­hanced so­cial me­dia screen­ing and vet­ting.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has been en­forc­ing the rule re­quir­ing for­eign na­tion­als ap­ply­ing for US visas to pro­vide their so­cial me­dia iden­ti­fiers on ap­pli­ca­tion forms. In a 12 Ju­ly Face­book post, the US Em­bassy in Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mind­ed ap­pli­cants that a US visa is a “priv­i­lege, not a right” and that all avail­able in­for­ma­tion would be used in the screen­ing and vet­ting process.

Visa hold­ers are not the on­ly ones fac­ing push­back over posts about Kirk. Sev­er­al US com­pa­nies have sus­pend­ed or ter­mi­nat­ed em­ploy­ees for re­marks on so­cial me­dia. These in­clude staff at ma­jor air­lines such as Delta and Amer­i­can. Con­ser­v­a­tive ac­tivists have al­so been shar­ing the names and em­ploy­ers of so­cial me­dia users they ac­cuse of cel­e­brat­ing Kirk’s death.

The mea­sures have drawn crit­i­cism from free speech ad­vo­cates. The free ex­pres­sion group PEN Amer­i­ca said on Mon­day it is “about more than just in­ci­dents of in­di­vid­u­als fac­ing pun­ish­ment or ha­rass­ment for their speech - ter­mi­na­tions, dox­ing, pub­lic sham­ing, and on­line abuse and threats send a chill­ing mes­sage for every­one that you can on­ly ex­press cer­tain ideas.” The group added, “these are well-worn tac­tics of in­tim­i­da­tion, de­signed to chill speech and ex­ert con­trol over not just the in­di­vid­u­als tar­get­ed, but al­so over the pub­lic mar­ket­place of ideas.”

Kirk, 31, was as­sas­si­nat­ed on 10 Sep­tem­ber while on the first stop of his ‘Prove Me Wrong’ tour at Utah Val­ley Uni­ver­si­ty. Tyler Robin­son, 22, is al­leged to have car­ried out the shoot­ing. He is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear in state court on Tues­day, charged with ag­gra­vat­ed mur­der, felony dis­charge of a firearm, and ob­struc­tion of jus­tice, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cials.