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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe Trump administration is planning to vet all 55 million foreigners who currently hold visas for travel to the United States, a significant expansion of ongoing efforts to clamp down on alleged abuses in the legal immigration system.
In an emailed statement, the State Department said that “continuous vetting” will allow the agency to revoke visas upon finding signs of potential ineligibility, including “things like any indicators of overstays, criminal activity, threats to public safety, engaging in any form of terrorist activity, or providing support to a terrorist organization.”
“We review all available information as part of our vetting, including law enforcement or immigration records or any other information that comes to light after visa issuance,” the statement said.
The Associated Press first reported that the State Department was reviewing visas held by 55 million foreigners.
The Trump administration has overseen a drastic crackdown on immigration. The crackdown initially focused on illegal migration to the United States but has expanded to include reviews of legal migration, such as by people who travel to the country on tourism, work or student visas.
The State Department issued close to 11 million temporary visas, which do not include permanent residency or “green cards,” during the 2024 fiscal year. The vast majority of those visas, 77 percent, were for business or tourism, while roughly 7 percent were issued to students or visiting academics and their families.
In practice, the process of revetting people who already hold a visa—potentially for years, in some cases—is likely to prove time-consuming and logistically complicated, officials have noted. The State Department has also introduced new measures, including the review of social media accounts for hostility toward the United States and antisemitism.
“We are gathering more information than ever,” said a senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to brief the media. The official admitted it was likely that social media vetting would add more time to the review process.
“Time is not my concern, the security of Americans is,” the senior official said.
The news alarmed some immigration experts, who said that visa holders are already subject to enhanced vetting when new information comes to light, including interactions with U.S. law enforcement agencies like arrests or convictions.
David J. Bier, the director of immigration policy at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in D.C., said it sounded like the administration wanted to “proactively conduct reviews of social media posts and revoke visas based not on conduct but speech.”
“I doubt that’s feasible for everyone, but I suspect that these reviews will be done in a discriminatory manner targeting immigrants with certain backgrounds and in certain visa categories or specific people they want an excuse to revoke,” Bier added.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security that is responsible for initially granting visas, wrote in a policy alert this week that it was updating its guidance to say that it will vet applicants for links to “anti-American or terrorist” groups or those that “support or promote antisemitic terrorism.”
Foreign students have become a focal point for the administration, which announced earlier this week that it had revoked more than 6,000 student visas for overstays and legal violations, including roughly 200 to 300 for what it described as “terrorism.”
The administration has also sought to revoke visas and deport people who took part in campus protests against the war in Gaza, claiming in some instances that these people had engaged in antisemitic behavior or shown support for designated terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
The senior State Department official declined say how many of the student visas revoked were related to activities at campus protests.
“There are thousands of people on visas in the United States who have exercised their freedom of speech who are not these people who we have revoked,” the senior official said.
In the statement, the State Department said that under President Donald Trump’s “commitment to protect U.S. national security and public safety,” it had revoked more than twice as many visas as during the same period last year, and roughly four times as many student visas.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio also announced Thursday that he will suspend the issuance of visas to commercial truck drivers after a fatal crash involving a semitruck that allegedly tried to make an unauthorized U-turn on a Florida highway. The truck driver is an Indian national who is in the country illegally, according to officials.
“The increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on U.S. roads is endangering American lives and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers,” Rubio wrote on X.
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The economic engine of America is going to sputter to a halt without immigration. Go look at the birthrate data out of China.
People around the world have wanted to flock to America and keep America growing. Our response is now to shut the doors and make up reasons we don’t want “those people”.
Which, sure, I guess we could do … if we chose to instead invest in ourselves. Which, well, is the exact opposite of what the Trump administration wants to do.
We are almost all descended from immigrants so I agree with your basic premise. And my German forebears spoke German and English, read German newspapers, and went to a German language church in this country right up to 1917. Not entirely unlike Latino immigrants today. (My grandmother told me war propaganda made them afraid to look un-American, so they all switched to English.)
On the other hand, Joe, “open borders” isn’t the answer either. Policing people who overstay their visas is a good start; obviously the truck driver from India who killed people in a Florida accident got here somehow, probably a tourist visa, and then just stayed.
We need immigration, and we need immigration policing, and we need immigration reform. All 3.
We’ve not had “open borders”. If we had open borders, apprehensions would be zero, which they’ve never been.
What we’ve had is a government that has been financially unable to process people quickly enough (never enough judges) that has intentionally decided to treat people in the worst way possible to both punish them for being here, and to scare future people from trying. I don’t find that compatible with the America we’ve been for centuries, nor the “Christian nation” that many claim that we are.
Joe, we’ve had a bunch of band-aids that created in-between statuses (see: “humanitarian parole”) instead of just admitting people, giving them green cards, and putting them on a track for citizenship. Executive orders implementing these in-between immigration statuses have allowed quick action that circumvents the lack of judges for folks fleeing humanitarian disasters and government persecution, something that is good. But that same status is now being used by a president of a different bent to throw people out of the country…we have now learned that executive authority cuts both ways.
And we’ve had people overstaying visas for years. They don’t cross the desert at night, they get off a plane with student or visit documents, but then don’t leave and don’t apply for legal entry. There’s been zero threat of apprehension.
Immigration law reform.
Immigration law enforcement.
Immigration.
We need all three, and the present MAGA Congress is opposed to two of them.
I don’t think they’re even in favor of law enforcement. It’s more just clearing anyone who doesn’t fit their vision of “real Americans” under the guise of “law enforcement”. Witness the push to redefine the 14th Amendment.
At what cost? This admin never discloses that important piece of information.
Well, there’s no way this could go poorly.