(José Niño, Headline USA) The United States has closed its doors to Irish nationalist commentator Keith Woods, and he lays responsibility for that at the feet of the Trump administration.
Writing on X this week, Woods walked through the timeline in a post under the pen name he uses in place of his given name, Keith O’Brien. During the Biden years, he said, he made several trips to America on the Visa Waiver Program, the ESTA system that spares most Irish citizens a consular interview. His renewal application came back rejected last summer.
“I then applied for a tourist visa and attended an embassy interview where an immigration officer read out an SPLC hit piece (an organisation currently under federal criminal prosecution) and asked me if I was an “ethnonationalist” and an “antisemite,” then refused my visa,” Woods wrote.
This clip is over a year old, but since it was made I have been refused entry into the U.S. by the Trump administration.
I traveled there multiple times under the Biden administration through the Visa Waiver Program using ESTA, which almost every Irish person receives easily… https://t.co/bewNFXAwIg
— Keith Woods (@KeithWoodsYT) August 2, 2026
A second message carried an image of the refusal notice. Woods took issue with the stated conclusion that he had not established why he wanted to travel, saying the interview covered his supposed extreme beliefs and the figures on the right he had spoken with online rather than his itinerary.
The notice I received after being refused a visa.
Regarding me not demonstrating the intent of my activities in the U.S., I wasn't actually asked questions about this beyond what extreme beliefs I supposedly hold, and what right-wing figures I have spoken to online. pic.twitter.com/alGPupYxkD
— Keith Woods (@KeithWoodsYT) August 2, 2026
Other Europeans have met the same fate quietly since 2024, according to Woods.
“Most of them don’t even talk about Israel or Jews, so it seems they are banned solely because of their views on immigration,” he wrote.
The aside about the Southern Poverty Law Center checks out. Eleven counts spanning wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering came down against the organization when a Montgomery grand jury indicted it in April. According to NPR, group entered a not guilty plea and is seeking dismissal, arguing the president is using the Justice Department against a critic.
Woods gained his following once Elon Musk reinstated accounts X had previously removed, and in 2023 he started the Ban the ADL push that reached the top of the platform’s worldwide trends. That same year the Irish Times called him a self-described raging anti-Semite with close ties to American nationalist personality Nick Fuentes.
No comment has come from the State Department or DHS, and no official has spelled out the legal basis for the refusal.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
