US says visa revocations have surpassed 300,000 under Trump

The Trump administration says it has revoked more than 300,000 US visas since President Donald Trump began his second term, marking a sharp increase from the figure disclosed by the State Department in August. The department said then that more than 175,000 visas had been cancelled since January 2025. State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott announced the updated figure on social media.

He said the administration had revoked visas “at a faster pace than any administration in history” and described the policy as applying “zero tolerance” to foreign nationals who break the law, commit fraud or undermine US national security. The announcement forms part of the administration’s broader immigration crackdown. Trump has said his enforcement and deportation programme is intended to improve domestic security, while the State Department has also expanded scrutiny of social-media activity by immigrants and visa applicants.

The reports do not provide a breakdown of the 300,000 revocations by visa type, nationality, legal basis or outcome. They therefore do not establish how many people have been deported, denied entry or successfully challenged the cancellation of their visas. Rights advocates cited by the South China Morning Post say the campaign has compromised due process and freedom of expression.

They have also raised concerns that ethnic minorities face racial profiling and that national-security justifications are being used to pursue critics of the administration. Among the cases condemned by those groups are visa cancellations involving foreign nationals who took part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations against Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Advocates have also criticised action against foreigners over social-media comments concerning the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.

The administration’s approach has extended beyond people accused of illegal immigration. The South China Morning Post reported that legal immigration had also become more difficult, including through expensive fees for some work visas and tougher online screening. Rights groups have separately accused officials of using individual fraud cases to target wider immigrant communities, including the Somali American community in Minnesota.

The reports present that as an allegation from advocates, not as an established finding by a court or government investigation. The latest announcement gives a new measure of the scale of the policy but leaves important questions unanswered. The August total was already more than 175,000; the new figure indicates that more than 125,000 additional revocations were reported in the intervening period, although the supplied reports do not specify when those decisions were made or how the State Department counted them.