UK Activist Behind ‘Disinformation Dozen’ Faces Possible US Deportation
The U.S. may deport Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, for targeting public figures — including U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others on its 2021 “Disinformation Dozen” list — and pressuring social media platforms to censor free speech
Critics say CCDH “claimed to protect people from misinformation, but what they really did was criminalize truth.”
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — a nonprofit nongovernmental organization (NGO) — targeted public figures, including U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for their statements on vaccines.
Ahmed, a British citizen based in Washington, D.C., could be deported to the U.K. if the U.S. revokes his visa. The Telegraph reported that U.S. officials have placed Ahmed at the “top of the list” of people being considered for visa restrictions.
CCDH — which claims to “stops the spread of online hate and disinformation” — named Kennedy, Dr. Joseph Mercola and pediatrician Dr. Sherri Tenpenny on its “Disinformation Dozen” list.
At the time, Kennedy was serving as chairman of Children’s Health Defense, the organization he founded.
A whistleblower leaked internal documents last year revealing that CCDH planned to “kill” Twitter — now known as X — and launch “black ops” against Kennedy. “Black ops” refer to secret operations carried out by governments or other organizations that conceal their involvement.
Minutes from CCDH’s Jan. 8, 2024, staff meeting stated, “RFK — black ops being set up to look at RFK. Nervousness about the impact of him on the election. We may be asked to comment, particularly from antivaxx.”
Sayer Ji, chairman of the Global Wellness Forum and founder of GreenMedInfo, was also listed among the “Disinformation Dozen.” Ji wrote on Substack that Ahmed’s potential deportation would be an “unprecedented action … marking the first time a foreign advocacy leader faces deportation over censorship activities targeting American citizens.”
‘It’s shocking that the Department of Justice has not charged him’
The U.S. Department of State would neither confirm nor deny that the White House is considering revoking Ahmed’s visa.
“Due to visa record confidentiality, we have no comment on department actions with respect to specific visa cases,” a department spokesman said in a statement cited by The Telegraph.
However, an unnamed source “with knowledge of the discussions” told The Telegraph that the Trump administration wants “to send a message that they’re not having it. They’re not happy. They are very actively considering visa restrictions on him.”
Earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. may ban foreign citizens who violate Americans’ free speech rights.
Sayer Ji told The Defender:
“From a national security standpoint, allowing a politically connected foreign operative to shape which U.S. citizens can speak online — and which narratives are erased — is intolerable. It violates both the spirit and the letter of our founding principles.”
Investigative journalist Paul Thacker told The Defender that Ahmed’s actions while in the U.S. — beyond his efforts to restrict Americans’ speech — may have prompted the White House to consider revoking his visa.
“As I have documented, he has lied before Congress about not receiving government funding, and he lied to the IRS to get tax-exempt status for CCDH. It’s shocking that the Department of Justice has not charged him,” Thacker said.
Ji agreed, saying the potential move to deport Ahmed “signals that the U.S. is finally recognizing how transnational censorship networks have undermined both sovereignty and the First Amendment.”
Ji said:
“Deportation alone is not the issue — the issue is accountability. If a foreign national has used charitable status and media access to influence U.S. policy and elections through covert coordination, that deserves thorough investigation.”
CCDH supported UK censorship law that targets Americans
CCDH has maintained ties with key Democratic Party figures in the U.S. and with leaders of the British Labour Party, currently in power.
CCDH co-founder Morgan McSweeney now serves as chief of staff to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and the organization played a role in Starmer’s rise to Labour Party leadership.
A 2024 investigation by journalists Thacker and Matt Taibbi found that CCDH used the same tactics it had developed to support Starmer and the U.S. Democratic Party — and to attack their critics — to target Elon Musk, Kennedy and others.
The Starmer government is now enforcing the Online Safety Act, a law that regulates online speech, including content determined to be “hate content.”
The Telegraph reported that the act allows the U.K. government to impose massive fines on U.S. companies such as Apple, Truth Social and X if it determines they violated hate speech rules.
According to the report, members of President Donald Trump’s inner circle view the potential penalties as an unwarranted foreign intrusion on Americans’ free speech, and that U.S. officials may consider revoking Ahmed’s visa as part of a broader effort to pressure the U.K. over the law.
Thacker said Ahmed has been one of the law’s strongest supporters. “Imran Ahmed is a resident of Northeast D.C. and was the first person to testify in favor of the Online Safety Act, which could be used to attack the free speech of Americans”.
The leaked internal documents from CCDH revealed that the organization pushed for a U.S. social media censorship law similar to the U.K.’s Online Safety Act.
According to The Telegraph, the U.K. telecommunications regulator Ofcom has written to several U.S. firms this year, “ordering them to conform to the act.” The move sparked outrage from Congress members and U.S. legal experts who view it as a British attempt “to silence America’s companies and citizens.”
“The one thing everyone [in the Trump administration] agrees on is the need to dramatically pressure the UK over the Online Safety Act,” the unnamed Trump administration source told The Telegraph.
Ahmed spoke at medical event cracking down on COVID ‘disinformation’
In a post on X, Dr. Mary Talley Bowden — an ear, nose and throat specialist reprimanded by the Texas Medical Board last month for helping a COVID-19 patient obtain ivermectin — said Ahmed may have influenced state medical boards to discipline doctors who challenged the official COVID-19 narrative.
Bowden said Ahmed spoke at an October 2021 event, “Stopping the Spread: Disinformation and its Impact on Physicians and Patients” hosted by the Federation of State Medical Boards. Soon after the event, “doctors across the country received complaints from their boards,” she said.
Ji called the potential revocation of Ahmed’s visa “a constitutional collision” between the U.S. and U.K.
He told The Defender that Ahmed’s possible deportation represents “a strategic and symbolic move by the administration — a message to foreign governments that America will not tolerate interference with our constitutional rights.”
Ji previously accused CCDH of coordinating a media campaign, with foreign influence, to discredit Kennedy.
Nebraska chiropractor Ben Tapper, also named on CCDH’s “Disinformation Dozen” list, said the organization used the guise of “fighting hate” to gain influence and funding through hidden donor networks.
He said CCDH partnered with Big Tech and government officials to suppress dissent and shape public perception.
After CCDH published its “Disinformation Dozen” list in 2021, mainstream media outlets frequently cited it to discredit those named, including Kennedy. Some outlets have since issued corrections.
The Biden administration and major social media platforms also targeted individuals on the list for censorship.
Evidence from First Amendment lawsuits against the Biden administration — along with revelations from the “Twitter Files” and “Facebook Files” — showed that federal officials used the “Disinformation Dozen” list to identify and suppress those voices online.
Tapper said CCDH “claimed to protect people from misinformation, but what they really did was criminalize truth and punish it, to wage war on free speech itself.”
“When unelected organizations can label truth as hate speech, censorship becomes virtue and tyranny disguises itself as safety. It’s a slippery slope that ends with silence, not justice. Censorship is the tool of the tyrant when the lie loses its power,” he said.
Ji called CCDH’s “Disinformation Dozen” campaign “one of the most egregious examples of coordinated defamation in modern history.” He added:
“It weaponized false data and emotional rhetoric to pressure tech companies and the White House into silencing independent voices on science, medicine and policy. Americans were denied access to information that could have informed critical decisions about their health and freedom.”
Congress is now investigating CCDH. Jordan, chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, subpoenaed CCDH last year as part of a probe into the nonprofit’s censorship activities and possible collusion with the Biden administration to suppress online speech.
Ji said the investigation — launched in 2023 — remains ongoing and is gaining momentum. He said:
“There’s growing bipartisan awareness that entities like CCDH have acted as foreign proxies in a censorship-industrial complex.
The investigations led by the House Judiciary Committee and other oversight bodies have begun connecting the dots between NGOs, intelligence-linked institutions and government censorship programs. This latest action will only accelerate that scrutiny.”
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Some bold emphasis added
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