The State Department announced on Monday that it has revoked over 175,000 visas since President Donald Trump returned to office last January.
The department stated that the revocations targeted foreign nationals who had “violated the terms of their visas, committed crimes, called for violence against U.S. citizens, defrauded Americans, abused our immigration system, or endangered national security.” According to the department, the “majority” of the visas were revoked due to “criminal activity.”
Trump has launched an aggressive crackdown on both legal and illegal immigration in his second term, vowing to deport the “worst of the worst” from the U.S.
Data have shown, however, that the majority of the people who have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the second Trump Administration have had no criminal convictions. The Administration’s immigration enforcement tactics, meanwhile, have drawn widespread outcry and official pushback, with courts striking down a number of its moves as violating longstanding laws and protests breaking out around the country following the killings of multiple U.S. citizens.
The department offered multiple examples of people whose visas have been revoked and the reasons why in its Monday release, though it did not provide any evidence or identifying information about the cases it referenced.
“The Trump Administration is protecting our nation and its citizens by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process,” a State Department spokesperson tells TIME in a statement, saying that the Secretary of State has “broad discretionary authority to revoke visas.”
Here are some of the groups of people who have been included in the Trump Administration’s sweeping visa cancellations, according to federal officials.
People accused of “criminal activity”
Most of the visas were revoked as a result of “law enforcement encounters for a range of criminal activity,” the State Department said.
It listed “assault, driving under the influence, theft, and drug crimes” as the “leading causes,” while noting that a “significant share” of the cancellations were also due to “reckless driving, sexual assault, child abuse, fraud and embezzlement, and other crimes.”
The department listed among its individual examples foreign nationals who it said were charged with violent and sexual offenses including instances of “rape and sexual battery – including of a victim who was mentally disabled”; kidnapping and human trafficking; domestic violence; and “sodomy of a child.”
Multiple other people whose visas were revoked, it said, were involved in fraud schemes—which Trump has made it a major focus of his second term agenda to c. One person “built a company on lies,” the department alleged, “faking revenue and fooling investors to swindle millions of dollars from clients.” In another of the examples it offered, the department said the visa holder “helped orchestrate a massive Medicaid scam – billing for over $5 million of fake services.”
Trump has made cracking down on fraud a major focus of his second term agenda. And foreign nationals have in multiple instances been targeted in the Administration’s anti-fraud campaign.
In one notable instance, the President accused Somalis in Minnesota of being involved in a welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota amid his immigration crackdown in the state, marking just the latest instance in which Trump has gone after the state’s sizable Somali community. “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. Democrats have condemned Trump’s targeting of the community.
In still another alleged instance cited by the State Department in its Monday release, someone had their visa revoked after they were arrested “for driving with heroin and a blood alcohol level more than 3x the legal limit.”
People who “celebrated” Charlie Kirk’s death
The State Department said that it had revoked the visas of “multiple foreign nationals who celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk,” including one who allegedly said of the conservative commentator, “when fascists die, democrats don’t complain,” and another who said Kirk “died too late.”
Kirk, the founder of the conservative youth activist group Turning Point USA and a friend of Trump’s, was shot and killed while he was hosting an event at Utah Valley University in September. Tyler Robinson, the suspect in Kirk’s killing, was arrested after a 33-hour manhunt.
In the aftermath of Kirk’s death, some on the right, including Trump, blamed the left for his killing and the broader rise in political violence around the country—despite data contradicting that portrayal—and called for a crackdown. The President asserted in an address at the time that “radical left” rhetoric comparing “wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals” was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.”
The State Department indicated at the time that it may withhold—or revoke—visas from non-citizens who made social media posts making light of Kirk’s shooting.
“In light of yesterday’s horrific assassination of a leading political figure, I want to underscore that foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country. I have been disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said in a post on X . He called for people to make him aware of such remarks and said that he would “direct consular officials to monitor the comments to this post.”
A State Department spokesperson said in a statement to news outlets when asked for comment on Landau’s post that “this Administration does not believe that the United States should grant visas to persons whose presence in our country does not align with U.S. national security interests.”
The department in October said that it had revoked the visas of six foreign nationals over comments they made online about Kirk’s assassination, saying in posts on X that it had “no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans.”
“Aliens who take advantage of America’s hospitality while celebrating the assassination of our citizens will be removed,” the department wrote.
People deemed deportable on ‘foreign policy grounds’
The State Department credited Secretary of State Marco Rubio with identifying “numerous” foreign nationals who it characterized as “deportable on foreign policy grounds.”
These people, according to the department, included a Cuban national “connected to a Cuban communist regime influence operation” and Iranian nationals “with connections to the Iranian regime.”
The Trump Administration has reportedly been moving to remove Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, and the President has suggested that he would turn his attention to the country after the war in Iran has been resolved. In February, the U.S. and Israel forced a different regime change when they launched their initial wave strikes against Iran, in which the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ali Khamenei, was killed.
The department also cited as examples of those whose visas were revoked for foreign policy reasons “a Laotian child sex offender” who it said was pardoned by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and “a Kuwaiti national who wished for violence against the President of the United States and called Americans his ‘enemy.’”
“Wishing violence upon the President of the United States and characterizing Americans as one’s enemy are not protected activities that entitle a foreign national to remain in the United States,” the department spokesperson says to TIME.
‘Birth tourists’
The department said that a U.S. embassy in North Africa revoked the visas of over 100 “birth tourist” parents, who intentionally give birth in the U.S. so that their children receive citizenship status.
Trump has sought to severely restrict birthright citizenship, which was established in the Fourteenth Amendment in the 19th century. Under the amendment, almost all of those born on U.S. soil automatically become citizens.
Trump attempted to take executive action to limit those privileges significantly, but the Supreme Court deemed the move unconstitutional and struck it down. Since that ruling, however, the Trump Administration has continued his efforts to restrict the law. The Department of Justice, the same day as the Supreme Court decision, said that it would “prioritize the investigation and prosecution of birth tourism schemes.” And last week Trump signed two new executive orders targeting birthright citizenship.
International students
Though the State Department did not include any mention of it in its Monday release, the Trump Administration has also revoked thousands of student visas.
The Administration has targeted student activists on college campuses; expanded social media screenings for certain visa holders’ accounts; targeted visas from Chinese students, citing security concerns; and limited the amount of time that students and foreign journalists can stay in the country, among a number of moves impacting foreign-born students.
Rubio said in August, roughly seven months after Trump returned to office, that more than 6,000 student visas had been revoked in that time.
The post The Trump Administration Has Revoked More Than 175,000 Visas. Here’s Who’s Included in the Crackdown appeared first on TIME.
