US state department has canceled over 175,000 visas since Trump’s return to office

The US Department of State has canceled more than 175,000 visas since Donald Trump returned to office, quadrupling the pace of revocations under Joe Biden’s final year in the White House, according to a new tally released by the department this week.The announcement said the revocations targeted foreign nationals who allegedly broke the terms of their visas, committed crimes, called for violence against Americans, defrauded US citizens, abused the immigration system or endangered national security. Many followed run-ins with law enforcement, the department said, with assault, drunk driving, theft and drug offenses the leading causes, alongside reckless driving, sexual assault, child abuse and fraud.The state department published an anecdotal cases to bolster its revocation campaign . They included a man charged with felony rape and sexual battery of a victim with a mental disability, and another accused of kidnapping, trafficking and sexually exploiting a minor. Also cited were a man arrested on charges including drunk driving and domestic violence, and another accused of driving with heroin in his system while more than three times over the legal blood alcohol limit.Biden’s state department revoked about 40,000 visas in 2024. Trump’s administration cancelled more than 100,000 in 2025 alone, and the monthly pace has kept climbing this year, from roughly 8,000 revocations a month in 2025 to more than 10,000 a month in 2026. The department has not said how the 175,000 figure breaks down by category, leaving unclear how many revocations stem from serious crimes as opposed to lesser infractions such as overstaying a visa.Several revocations touched on political speech. The best-known case is that of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University whose visa was pulled after she co-wrote an opinion piece criticizing the university’s stance on the war in Gaza. She was detained by immigration authorities, though a judge later dismissed the case against her, and has since moved back to Turkey.But the department said it had canceled the visas of multiple foreign nationals who commented on the killing of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk last September, including one who said Kirk had “died too late”.Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, has also determined that a number of foreign nationals are deportable on foreign policy grounds, the department said, naming a Cuban national linked to an influence campaign tied to Havana, Iranian nationals connected to Tehran’s government and a Kuwaiti national accused of voicing hostility toward the US president.Officials said a US embassy in North Africa had cancelled more than 100 visas held by parents accused of travelling to the US mainly so their children would be born American citizens. Trump has separately sought to restrict the practice through an executive order that is being challenged in court after a supreme court setback.One case cited by the department involved a Laotian national, Tou Lue Vang, who was deported last month. Vang had been pardoned weeks earlier by the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, over a 2005 conviction for sexually abusing a child.Visa cancellations are separate from deportations, which fall to the Department of Homeland Security. That agency has said more than 605,000 people have been removed from the country since Trump took office, part of what the administration calls the largest deportation operation in US history.The department described the revocations as the product of a continuous vetting system introduced last year, which screens roughly 55 million foreign nationals holding valid US visas for signs they no longer meet the conditions of their status.“A US visa is a privilege, not a right,” the department said in the press release.