The number arrived on a Tuesday, in a social-media post. Tommy Pigott, the spokesman for the US State Department — America’s foreign ministry — announced that the Trump administration has revoked more than 300,000 visas since the president’s second term began in January 2025.
“With over 300,000 revocations, the Trump administration has revoked more visas at a faster pace than any administration in history,” Pigott wrote on X, adding that Washington had “zero tolerance for foreigners here on visas who break the law, commit fraud, or undermine our national security.”
The figure, first reported by Reuters, is not just large — it is accelerating fast. In January, the department said it had revoked just over 100,000 visas, a record at the time. By August 10, the number had climbed past 175,000. Now it has nearly doubled again, in a matter of weeks.
Who is losing their visas
The State Department says the revocations target foreign nationals who broke the law, committed fraud or posed threats to national security. A White House fact sheet released alongside the announcement gives a partial breakdown: at least 4,000 visas were pulled over so-called “birth tourism” — trips taken to the United States to give birth so the child gains American citizenship — and 6,000 from foreign students who committed crimes or have ties to terrorism. More than 700 visas from Chinese nationals have been revoked by a Birth Tourism Prevention Task Force the administration launched in August, according to the White House fact sheet.
The department has not said which nationalities are most affected overall.
The crackdown runs far beyond the revocations themselves. The administration has tightened social-media vetting for visa applicants and immigrants — a policy rights groups say amounts to surveillance — and expanded screening across the immigration system. Birth tourism, once a niche enforcement category, now has its own task force.
The pushback
Rights advocates have condemned the campaign from the start. They argue it has violated due process and free-speech rights, and created an unsafe environment — particularly for ethnic minorities, who have raised concerns about racial profiling.
Some of the most fiercely criticized revocations involve pro-Palestinian foreign protesters demonstrating against Israel’s attacks on Gaza, and foreigners penalized over their social-media comments about the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. The government, advocates say, has deployed national-security justifications to target critics and used isolated cases of fraud to broadly single out immigrant communities — including the Somali American community in Minnesota.
Why this matters beyond the United States
For anyone holding — or hoping to get — an American visa, this changes the math. Three hundred thousand revocations mean hundreds of thousands of people whose travel plans, studies, jobs and family visits have been cut short, many with little public recourse. The social-media vetting policy means that what applicants post online, even from abroad, is now part of the application. Students weighing American universities, workers considering US postings, and families planning visits are all watching the same numbers.
It is also part of a pattern. This week alone, Washington’s immigration posture has tightened on multiple fronts — from barring major tech companies from the green-card pipeline to a proposed $70,000 fee for international students working after graduation. With midterm elections — America’s congressional elections — coming in November, the pace shows no sign of slowing.
