Secretary Marco Rubio’s State Department has slashed more than 6,000 student visas since an executive order in January ordered a review for “security risks.”
The visa crackdown is one of the most visible immigration initiatives in education. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed a Fox News report about the visas on social media.
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A senior State Department official confirmed to the Washington Examiner that each student visa was revoked “because the individual has either broken the law or expressed support for terrorism while in the United States.”
“About 4,000 visas alone have been revoked because these visitors broke the law while visiting our country, including records of assault and [driving under the influence],” they added.
About 800 of those students faced arrest or charges stemming from assault, the official said. Visas for 200 to 300 people were pulled due to “support for terrorism.”
President Donald Trump issued an executive order titled “PROTECTING THE UNITED STATES FROM FOREIGN TERRORISTS AND OTHER NATIONAL SECURITY AND PUBLIC SAFETY THREATS,” to evaluate the visa process and foreign nationals already in the U.S.
The order also aimed to protect national security and safeguard the country from terrorists. Other orders cited enhanced enforcement processes of antisemitism that would cross over to college campuses.
In April, Rubio asked diplomats to review the social media of student visa and other visa applicants for “hostile attitudes” toward the U.S. In the days before the move, immigration officials seized people they deemed friendly toward Hamas and revoked their student visas.
Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk were targeted and have ongoing court cases.
The student visa evaluation process has been targeted toward specific countries, such as China, at times.
Rubio said in May that Chinese students’ visas would be “aggressively revoked.” He added that future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong would undergo enhanced reviews.
In June, Trump issued a proclamation targeting Harvard University’s student visa holders. He noted that China uses the program to “try to take advantage of American higher education by exploiting the student visa program for improper purposes.”
The State Department says around 40,000 visas have been revoked in 2025, compared to 16,000 in the same period during the Biden administration. The official noted that while the previous administration was “doing less, they were still revoking visas.”
“It’s not something that just started on Jan. 20 … So this has happened for years,” they said.
The State Department’s top official said in May that visas were “a privilege, not a right.”
“Whenever the government catches non-U.S. citizens breaking our laws, we will take action to revoke their status. The time of contemptuously taking advantage of our nation’s generosity ends,” Rubio added.
Most Senate Democrats penned the administration in April, asking it to end the revocation of student visas.
RUBIO DEFENDS MOVE TO PAUSE VISITOR VISAS FOR GAZANS
“We recently learned that your agencies have been revoking student visas and terminating Student Exchange and Visitor Information System (SEVIS) records across the country,” they wrote.
“These actions to end student status reflected an unannounced change in policy and were inconsistent with existing laws, regulations, policies, and agency guidance governing the maintenance and termination of student status,” they added.