Harmeet Dhillon, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the US Department of Justice, has once again flagged an unlawful hiring post strictly attracting H-1B visa holders for certain tech jobs in the United States. The Indian-origin official appointed by US President Donald Trump has repeatedly called out similar job advertisements outrightly disregarding or “discriminating against” American workers in her previous social media activity as well.
Amid the raging row over H-1B hiring replacing American workers, the Trump administration has ramped up its immigration crackdown as part of its ‘America First’ approach. As a result, the MAGA leader has imposed even stricter rules focussed on a major overhaul of the ‘specialty occupations’ US visa category meant to attract skilled foreign talent to America.
‘Illegal’ H-1B hiring post called out on X
A re-shared post on X shed light on a LinkedIn hiring post originally pushed by a man named Prasad Dp, claiming to be a Business Development Manager at Arisen IT Solutions. in his post, the user that interested candidates, “H-1B only,” can reach out via a listed email ID.
“#Passport No mandatory for this role,” the post states. “Need #10+ Years of Experience. #H1B candidates only. Mail: bruce@arisenit.com.”
Although the post doesn’t outrightly mention the job openings are New York-centred, the mere mention of the task orders ‘HBITS-xx-xxxxx’ is a clear indication of it being a reference to Hourly-Based Information Technology Services contract for New York State.
According to the official New York State website, the statewide Hourly Based IT Services (HBITS) contract award is valid from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2029.
“New York State Procurement recognizes that as advancements in technology continue to grow at a rapid pace, the need to hire hourly based information technology staff is essential to an agency’s success, and the hiring of hourly staff is and has been an ever-increasing challenge for state and local governments,” states ogs.ny.gov.
“The HBITS contracts are written so that any government entity across the state can use them, including: state agencies; local governments; public authorities; public school and fire districts; public and nonprofit libraries; other nonpublic/nonprofit organisations.”
The job openings listed in the flagged LinkedIn post were: Senior .NET Developer with Patient Tracking Experience, Senior Java Developer with JSF and Government Agency Experience, MUMPS Programmers, Data Warehouse Architect with Master Data Management (MDM), Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) and Government agency Experience, and ArcGIS Specialist with the transportation domain.
Indian-origin Trump aide to probe ‘only H-1B candidates’ job post
Quote-posting the tweet highlighting the “H-1B candidates only” hiring post, Harmeet Dhillon, wrote on X, “This is not legal. We will look into this.” She tagged her department, the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice in the tweet.
In a similar post shared in December 2025, Dhillon took cognisance of an alert raised by former West Virginia State Delegate Derrick Evans, pointing towards an IT staffing firm called LanceSoft allegedly rendering US citizens ineligible for a job in America.
Trump admin vs H-1B visa hiring
With some US companies having relied on the work visa qualification to hire foreign workers at a significant discount to American workers, the Trump administration has imposed certain H-1B policy changes over the past few months to address what it describes as the “abuse of the H-1B visa program.”
Several US lawmakers Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego, have called on the Trump admin to crack down on “corporate H-1B abuse and put American workers first” over the past year. In a more targeted approach, Republican Representative Greg Steube proposed the Ending Exploitative Imported Labor Exemptions Act (EXILE) Act earlier this year, pushing for the termination of the H-1B visa program altogether.
On the contrary, Indian-origin Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi reintroduced the High-Skilled Immigration Reform for Employment (HIRE) Act, a legislation dedicated to doubling the number of H-1B visas available each year—from 65,000 to 130,000.
On its part, the Trump admin introduced an additional $100,000 fee for new H-1B petitions in September 2025. Its H-1B overhauls also ultimately announced changes in the process for awarding the work visa by replacing the random lottery with a new weighted selection prioritising higher-skilled and higher-paid foreign workers.
In December 2025, the US Department of State even announced the expansion of the screening and vetting for H-1B and Dependent H-4 visa applicants. The new requirement demanded applicants of these visa categories to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media profiles to public. The major shake-up severely pushed back thousands of visa appointments, leaving many stranded in their countries of origin while posing a big threat to their employment status in the US.