U.S. Invalidates More Than 100,000 Visas in Immigration Ban Crackdown

The United States has canceled more than 100,000 visas since President Donald Trump first took office, the State Department said. The surge has continued even as the administration maintains its hard line on enforcement of immigration laws.

Revoked visas are up by more than twofold from this time last year, officials said. The total figure includes roughly 8,000 foreign students and about 2,500 skilled workers. The majority of the visa cancellations were associated with encounters with US law enforcement, though it was not clear whether any of those had resulted in actual charges, authorities said.

That jump is part of a more expansive immigration push put in place following Trump’s return to the White House. The administration has tallied more than 2.5 million deportations and voluntary departures as a record achievement. But some of those removals were men and women with visas in hand — a trend that is worrying civil rights lawyers about due process protections and human rights.

The administration has also further constricted the visa-approval process. Among the new measures, would be deeper social media checks and wider background screening. These measures are intended to ensure the safety of the public and prevent security risks, State Department officials said.

Visa overstays, drunk driving, assault and theft were listed as the most-frequent causes for revocation. The State Department also announced the establishment of a Continuous Vetting Center, which will monitor foreign nationals already in the country and rescind visas quickly if risks are identified.

The administration has ordered U.S. diplomats to scrutinize more closely those who would-be visa-holders might suspect of having hostile views toward the country or participating in politics. Previous estimates had indicated that some 80,000 non-immigrant visas were revoked shortly after Trump started his second term in ofice in January 2025.

Trump ran on a platform of implementing the largest removal operation in history. Critics say its orders have ensnared both criminals and non-criminals, and that it might be taking people based on their political beliefs.

A few recent cases have attracted public attention. Visas have been revoked or denied to student protesters engaged in pro-Palestinian activism, and a number of foreigners who commented online praising violence against Americans are believed to have lost their visas. Now, those moves have ignited a debate on free speech rights.

Friction has also escalated about the way immigration enforcement is playing out. Demonstrations broke out after a woman was killed by the police in Minneapolis at a time of fierce immigration enforcement, adding to anger across the country over the crackdown.