The United States has revoked more than 100,000 visas since President Donald Trump took office on an anti-migrant platform, a record for a single year, the State Department said Monday.
“The Trump administration has no higher priority than protecting American citizens and upholding American sovereignty,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said.
The figure since Trump’s second inauguration on January 20, 2025, is two and a half times the number revoked in 2024, when Joe Biden was president.
The State Department said that “thousands” of the visas were revoked over crimes, which can include assault and also drunk driving.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has proudly highlighted his revocation of visas from students who protested against Israel.
Rubio used a McCarthy-era law that allows the United States to block entry to foreigners seen as going against US foreign policy, although some of his high-profile targets successfully challenged deportation orders in court.
The State Department said 8,000 of the revoked visas were for students.
The Trump administration has also tightened vetting for visas, including moving to screen social media postings of visitors.
The visa revocations are part of a wider campaign of mass deportations, carried out aggressively through a surge of federal agents.
The Department of Homeland Security last month said that the Trump administration has deported more than 605,000 people and that 2.5 million others left on their own.
AFP