State Department Revokes Over 175,000 Visas Under Trump, Quadrupling Biden-Era Pace

The US State Department announced on August 10, 2026, that it has revoked more than 175,000 visas since Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, a rate roughly four times the pace recorded during Joe Biden's final year in the White House. (The Guardian; Reuters)

For comparison, the State Department revoked approximately 40,000 visas in all of 2024 under the Biden administration. The Trump administration cancelled more than 100,000 visas in 2025 alone, and the monthly revocation pace has since climbed from roughly 8,000 per month in 2025 to more than 10,000 per month in 2026. (The Guardian)

The revocations are the product of a continuous vetting system introduced last year that screens roughly 55 million foreign nationals holding valid US visas, according to the State Department. Most of the cancellations stemmed from law-enforcement encounters involving criminal activity, the department said. (The Guardian; Al Jazeera)

The State Department said the cancellations targeted foreign nationals who allegedly broke visa terms, committed crimes, called for violence against Americans, defrauded US citizens, abused the immigration system, or endangered national security. The leading causes cited included assault, drunk driving, theft, drug offenses, reckless driving, sexual assault, child abuse, and fraud. (The Guardian)

The department has not disclosed how the 175,000 revocations break down by category, leaving unclear what proportion involved criminal convictions versus other grounds such as foreign policy determinations or visa-term violations. (The Guardian)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio determined a number of foreign nationals deportable on foreign policy grounds. Those cases included 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. (The Guardian)

Several revocations drew attention for their political dimensions. Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University, had her visa pulled after co-writing an opinion piece criticizing the university's stance on the war in Gaza. She has since returned to Turkey. The State Department also said it cancelled the visas of multiple foreign nationals who commented on the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September 2025, including one individual who said Kirk had "died too late." (The Guardian)

A US embassy in North Africa cancelled more than 100 visas held by parents accused of traveling to the US primarily so their children would be born American citizens. The State Department also cited the case of Tou Lue Vang, a Laotian national deported last month after being pardoned weeks earlier by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz over a 2005 conviction for sexually abusing a child. (The Guardian)

The Department of Homeland Security reported separately that more than 605,000 people have been removed from the country since Trump took office. (The Guardian)

The broader policy architecture extends beyond individual revocations. Effective January 21, 2026, the State Department paused all visa issuances to immigrant visa applicants from nationalities identified as high risk for public benefits usage. A separate proclamation suspending visa issuance to foreign nationals specified that no visas issued before January 1, 2026, at 12:01 a.m. EST would be revoked under its authority, meaning the suspension and the revocation campaigns operate on parallel but distinct tracks. (travel.state.gov; travel.state.gov)

The State Department has also wielded visa restrictions as a bilateral diplomatic tool. In February 2026, it imposed visa restrictions on three Chilean government officials accused of knowingly undermining regional security. On January 25, 2026, the department announced steps to impose visa restrictions on and revoke the visas of two Transitional Presidential Council members in Haiti for supporting gangs. (state.gov; state.gov)

The continuous vetting system's scale, 55 million valid visa holders under ongoing screening, represents an operational shift from the prior model of largely adjudicating visas at the point of application and relying on post-arrival enforcement. The accelerating monthly pace, combined with the department's refusal to disaggregate revocations by category, makes it difficult to assess what share of the 175,000 cases involve serious criminality versus speech-related or foreign policy determinations. That opacity will likely fuel ongoing debate over where enforcement ends and ideological vetting begins, particularly as cases like Öztürk's and the Kirk-comment revocations test the boundaries of what conduct can cost a foreign national their legal status in the United States.