‘If you spend your career….’: Who is Imran Ahmed? Why is he not allowed to enter the US?

The US State Department banned several influential Europeans from entering the United States citing their anti-American stance where they wanted to harm Amercians. Manchester’s Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, is one of them. The organization has previously listed Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, as a director. The State Department called Ahmed a key collaborator with the Biden administration who wanted to kill Elon Musk’s Twitter. “WE’VE SANCTIONED: Imran Ahmed, key collaborator with the Biden Administration’s effort to weaponize the government against U.S. citizens. Ahmed’s group, Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), created the infamous “disinformation dozen” report, which called for platforms to deplatform twelve American “anti-vaxxers”, including now-HHS Secretary @SecKennedy . Leaked documents from CCDH show the organization listed “kill Musk’s Twitter” and “trigger EU and UK regulatory action” as priorities. The organization supports the UK’s Online Safety Act and EU’s Digital Services Act to expand censorship in Europe and around the world,” the department said.

“For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship,” Marco Rubio said.

List of other European figures banned by Marco Rubio

Thierry BretonClare MelfordAnna-Lena von HodenbergJosephine Ballon“None of those sanctioned is a current UK or EU official—however, we know that foreign government officials are actively targeting the United States. This week, the UK’s Liberal Democrats claimed President’s Trump National Security Strategy amounts to “foreign interference” by a “hostile foreign state” because it correctly identifies mass migration and decaying national sovereignty as existential European security concerns,” the department said. “These sanctions are visa-related. We aren’t invoking severe Magnitsky-style financial measures, but our message is clear: if you spend your career fomenting censorship of American speech, you’re unwelcome on American soil,” the department said.