The State Department Says It Has Revoked 300,000 Visas. Enforce the Law, and Show the Work.
The Trump administration says it has revoked more than 300,000 visas in the president's second term, most for crimes such as assault and drunk driving.
The facts come first below. My opinion follows in the section marked as opinion.
The Trump administration has revoked more than 300,000 U.S. visas during the president's second term, the State Department said Tuesday, Reuters reported in a story published by The Straits Times. The number shows the pace of revocations has sped up in recent weeks.
How fast the number has grown
In January, the department said it had revoked more than 100,000 visas, a record at the time, and the count passed 175,000 in August, Al Jazeera reported. The State Department's own Aug. 10 release put the total then at more than 175,000 and said most of those were revoked after law enforcement encounters, with assault, driving under the influence, theft and drug crimes as the leading causes.
Announcing the new figure on X, State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said the administration "has revoked more visas at a faster pace than any administration in history". He added that the administration has "zero tolerance for foreigners here on visas who break the law, commit fraud, or undermine our national security," according to Reuters.
What the department says the revocations were for
A State Department official gave Al Jazeera a breakdown. "The vast majority of these revocations were due to criminal activity, public safety concerns, immigration violations, fraud or misrepresentation, or other information indicating the individual was no longer eligible for a visa," the official said. The official said 25 percent were for assault and related crimes and 22 percent for driving under the influence, with 7 percent for theft and another 7 percent for substance abuse or distribution. "More than 4,000 of the revocations were for aliens who engaged in or facilitated birth tourism," the official said, Al Jazeera reported.
"We are taking, and will continue to take, action to keep our borders, and our nation, secure," the department told Al Jazeera in an email.
The criticism
Rights advocates say the crackdown has violated due process and free speech rights and has created an unsafe environment, particularly for ethnic minorities, Reuters reported. Among the revocations advocates have condemned most are those of pro-Palestinian foreign protesters and of foreigners over their social media comments about conservative commentator Charlie Kirk's assassination. The administration has also tightened social media screening of immigrants and visa applicants, according to Reuters.
Opinion: A visa is a privilege, so the process should be clear
The State Department is right about the basic principle. A visa is permission to visit, study or work in someone else's home, and the guest who assaults a neighbor or drives drunk on our roads has broken faith with the host. If the department's own breakdown holds up, about one in four of these revocations were for assault and related crimes and more than one in five were for drunk driving. Few Americans would want those visitors to stay. Scripture teaches that rulers are "not a terror to good works, but to the evil," and enforcing the terms of a visa is part of that duty.
The same Scripture also commands care for the stranger. "The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you," the Lord told Israel in Leviticus 19:34. That does not mean open borders. It means the law should be applied fairly, the same way to everyone, with an honest process.
That is where the administration could do better. The 300,000 figure came in a post on X and a statement from an unnamed official. The public has percentages, not a full report. A government that is proud of the work should publish it: how many revocations followed a criminal conviction rather than an arrest, how many were for speech alone, and how many people got the chance to answer the charge. Conservatives who worried about government overreach when the other side held power should want those numbers too.
Speech cases deserve special care. Some foreigners who celebrated Charlie Kirk's murder said vile things, as the State Department's August release showed, and a nation can decline to host people who cheer political violence. But the line between threats and opinions matters, and it is the government's job to draw it carefully and in the open.
Enforce the law. Remove those who commit crimes. And show the American people the work, so that no one has to take the numbers on faith. For a look at how detention and immigration enforcement affect families here, read our story Dallas Green Card Holder Dies in ICE Detention in Laredo.
