Trump Administration Revokes 6,000 Student Visas – HotAir

The State Department has revoked more than 6,000 student visas, a majority of which were for people who had committed crimes in the US. A smaller number were revoked for supporting terrorism.

The roughly 6,000 visas that were pulled were primarily due to visa overstays or encounters with the law, including assault, DUIs, burglary and support for terrorism, the State Department told Fox News Digital. 

“Every single student visa revoked under the Trump Administration has happened because the individual has either broken the law or expressed support for terrorism while in the United States,” a senior State Department official said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “About 4,000 visas alone have been revoked because these visitors broke the law while visiting our country, including records of assault and DUIs.”

Those who had their student visas yanked due to assault — roughly 800 students — either faced arrest or charges stemming from assault, according to the State Department official. 

Those whose visas were pulled due to support for terrorism — between 200 people to 300 people — engaged in behavior such as raising funds for the militant group Hamas, which the U.S. State Department has designated as a terrorist organization, the official said. 

A spokesman for the State Department made a point of saying that visas were being revoked under the previous administration as well, though it wasn’t publicized.

Altogether, the State Department told Fox News Digital that approximately 40,000 visas have been pulled in 2025, in comparison to the 16,000 that were revoked during the same time frame under the Biden administration. 

“Even if the previous administration was doing less, they were still revoking visas,” the State Department official said. “It’s not something that just started on January 20 … So this has happened for years.”

The 6,000 revoked visas sounds like a lot but the context here is that the US issued 400,000 student visas in 2024, so it’s a fairly small percentage of the total. But the Trump administration has also been trying to crack down on the number of visas granted in the first place. In May they floated the idea of checking applicant’s social media profiles. The following month, after a pause, they made it a requirement.

In June, the State Department told its embassies and consulates it must vet student visa applicants for “hostile attitudes towards our citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles.” Applicants will be asked to set their social media profiles to public as part of the vetting, and a diplomatic cable noted that “limited access to, or visibility of, online presence could be construed as an effort to evade or hide certain activity.”

All of this connects to President Trump’s ongoing battle with colleges and universities. Many of these schools rely on foreign students for income because the foreign students pay more than US students. Making it tougher to get a student visa and revoking more of them will result in a drop in foreign students and a resulting drop in the bottom line for these schools.

For the students, they have other options in Asia and Europe and are being forced to consider them now that the US and other countries are cracking down on student visas.

…the United States isn’t the only developed country to push back against international students. Canada and Australia limited international student visas last year, while Britain raised visa fees and was contemplating shortening postgraduate work visas.

“No country is being extremely welcoming at this stage,” said Yash Sharma, who runs an admissions consultancy called Longshore Education focused on the market in India. “Everywhere in the English-speaking world there is anti-immigration sentiment going around.”

On the plus side, we may have fewer Hamas supporters on campuses and more opens slots at top schools for Americans. That may not benefit the schools counting on the money that foreign students bring in, but it should be beneficial to those American students who take the slots instead.