WASHINGTON: The administration of President Donald Trump has revoked more than 6,000 student visas for overstays and breaking the law, including a small minority for “support for terrorism,” a State Department official said on Monday.
The move, first reported by Fox Digital, comes as the Trump administration has adopted a particularly hard-line approach toward student visas as part of its immigration crackdown, tightening social media vetting and expanding screening.
Directives from the State Department this year have ordered U.S. diplomats abroad to be vigilant against any applicants whom Washington may see as hostile to the United States and with a history of political activism.
Around 4,000 visas were canceled because the visitors broke the law, with the vast majority being assault, the official said. Driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs and burglary were other offenses, the official added.
About 200 to 300 visas were revoked for terrorism, the official said, citing a rule about visa ineligibility under the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual. The rule identifies ineligibility grounds generally as “engaging in terrorist activities” and “having certain links to terrorist organizations.”
The official did not say which groups the students whose visas have been revoked were in support of.
President Donald Trump has clashed with several top-level U.S. universities, accusing them of becoming bastions of antisemitism following large-scale student protests advocating for Palestinian rights amid the Gaza war. In his clash with Harvard, Trump has frozen funding for investigations and threatened to remove the university’s tax-exempt status, prompting several European nations to increase research grants to attract talent.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said he has revoked the visas of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, including students, because they got involved in activities which he said went against U.S. foreign policy priorities.
Trump administration officials have said that student visa and green card holders are subject to deportation over their support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza, calling their actions a threat to U.S. foreign policy and accusing them of being pro-Hamas.
A Tufts University student from Turkey was held for over six weeks in an immigration detention center in Louisiana after co-writing an opinion piece criticizing her school’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza. She was released from custody after a federal judge granted her bail.
Trump’s critics have called the effort an attack on free speech rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.