The State Department has revoked more than 250,000 visas since President Trump returned to office, Fox News reported Wednesday, a pace that has added roughly 75,000 revocations since the count stood at 175,000 in August.
Department officials told Fox the visas were pulled from foreigners who broke the terms of their stay, committed crimes, called for violence against Americans, defrauded Americans or posed a risk to national security.
"Every visa decision is a national security decision," State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott told the network. "A U.S. visa is a privilege, not a right."
What gets a visa pulled
The largest share is not exotic. According to Fox, most of the revocations counted in August followed encounters with American law enforcement, and the leading causes were assault, driving under the influence, theft and drug offenses. Reckless driving, sexual assault, child abuse, fraud and embezzlement also appear on the list.
Smaller categories show where the department has been looking. About 2,300 visas were revoked over birth tourism, the practice of traveling to the United States to deliver a child who will be a citizen. On Monday the department revoked the visas of 27 current and former officials and family members from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru over corruption allegations.
How it works
A visa is permission to ask for entry, and the law has always let the government withdraw it. What has changed is the checking. Under past practice, a visa was scrutinized hardest on the day it was issued and seldom looked at again. The department under Secretary of State Marco Rubio has treated the review as continuing for as long as the visa is valid, so that an arrest in Ohio in year three can reach a consular file.
That is the system most Americans assumed was already in place. A guest who is arrested for drunk driving or assault has broken the terms of the invitation, and the country that issued it is entitled to take it back.
The next 200,000
The number is likely to keep climbing. Fox reported that the department is targeting as many as 200,000 B1/B2 visitor visas issued between 2016 and 2026 to people who arrived as tourists or business travelers and then applied for asylum.
"Asylum isn't supposed to be a loophole to circumvent immigration laws," Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau told Fox.
That group is where the hard cases will be. Someone who tells a consular officer he is coming for two weeks of sightseeing and files an asylum claim on arrival has, at a minimum, misdescribed his plans. Some of those claims are also genuine, and a revoked visitor visa does not by itself decide an asylum case, which runs through a separate process. The department has not said how it will tell the two apart.
What is still missing
Everything in the count comes from the department by way of one news outlet. No breakdown by country or visa type has been published, and neither has the number of revocations later reversed as mistakes. In a system moving this fast, some will be. Publishing those figures would cost the administration nothing and would make a strong record harder to argue with.
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