The Trump administration is on pace to revoke a record number of visas this year, the State Department said on Monday, as it disclosed that more than 175,000 had been revoked since US President Donald Trump returned to office.
The visas were revoked from foreign nationals who “violated the terms of their visas, committed crimes, called for violence against US citizens, defrauded Americans, abused our immigration system, or endangered national security”, according to the State Department.
A State Department spokesperson told the South China Morning Post that more than 100,000 visas were revoked in 2025 – the highest annual number on record – and that the department was on pace to exceed that figure in 2026.
That indicates at least 75,000 additional visas have been revoked this year, although the department did not provide an exact 2026 tally or a breakdown by visa category or nationality.
The spokesperson said each revocation decision was made on a case-by-case basis, according to the facts of the individual case.
The official announcement did not provide a breakdown of the revocations by visa type or country of nationality, instead referring broadly to foreign nationals and highlighting cases involving nationals from North African countries, as well as deportable cases involving Iranian, Kuwaiti, Cuban and Laotian nationals.
“The majority of these visas were revoked due to law enforcement encounters for a range of criminal activity, with assault, driving under the influence, theft, and drug crimes being the leading causes,” the State Department wrote in a fact sheet.
“A significant share of visas were revoked for reckless driving, sexual assault, child abuse, fraud and embezzlement, and other crimes.”
A high-profile case cited in the announcement involves Tou Lue Vang, 42, a Hmong man from St. Paul, Minnesota, who was deported to Laos in July after his US legal status was terminated by the Trump administration.
Vang had been pardoned a month earlier, in June, by Minnesota’s Board of Pardons following his 2006 conviction for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl.
In January, the State Department said it had revoked more than 100,000 visas in 2025, including about 8,000 student visas and 2,500 specialty work visas held by people who had encounters with US law enforcement over criminal activity.
Martin Kim, director of immigration advocacy at Advancing Justice/AAJC, said the visa revocations were another move by the Trump administration to “explicitly design a system that makes it impossible to come to the US and impossible to live in the US as an immigrant”.
“For people who are already here, immigrants who are already here, even Americans – people who have naturalised who are here – their goal is to make it extremely unpleasant, extremely hostile for those individuals as well,” he said.
Kim said some immigrants had gone through the criminal justice system when they were young but had since rebuilt their lives and become integrated into their communities.
The Trump administration, he said, does not appear to be focused on public safety, instead using any past involvement with the legal system as a justification for broader attacks on immigration.
He also said the administration is ultimately motivated by “outdated and discriminatory ideas of who should and should not be an American”.
Birth tourism crackdown
Some of the revoked visas likely involved tourist visas, although the State Department did not disclose the visa categories.
The State Department said more than 100 visas were revoked by a US embassy in the North Africa region for “birth tourism” – cases involving parents who travelled to the United States primarily to give birth so their children would obtain US citizenship.
The disclosure of the birth-tourism-related revocations came four days after Trump signed two executive orders seeking to curtail the practice and respond to a Supreme Court ruling that upheld constitutional birthright citizenship.
One of the new orders directs officials to strengthen visa screening, investigate suspected birth-tourism operations and consider criminal or civil action against businesses that facilitate them.
The second formally acknowledges the Supreme Court ruling while directing agencies to examine what additional restrictions remain legally available.
The president also signed an executive order on his first day back in the White House that directed federal agencies to deny citizenship documents to children born in the US when their parents were undocumented or present under temporary visas, including skilled workers and students.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on June 30 that children born in the US to parents who were unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth under the 14th Amendment, rejecting Trump’s attempt to block birthright citizenship.
Although the administration initially emphasised children born to undocumented migrants, it increasingly focused on birth tourism – and particularly on allegations involving Chinese nationals – in the period surrounding the court’s decision.
“I would like to congratulate President Xi, and the Great Country of China, on their massive Birthright Citizenship WIN! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” Trump wrote on social media after the ruling.
Monday’s State Department announcement, however, did not say whether any of the visa revocations involved Chinese nationals.
There is no federal data set that directly measures so-called birth tourism. Available figures, however, indicate that these births make up a small percentage of those in the US annually.
According to research by Penn State University, which made its estimates by looking at births to foreign-born mothers who reported permanent residences outside the US, birth tourism accounted for fewer than 0.3 per cent of all US births in any year from 2014 to 2024.
Trump has targeted both legal and illegal immigration to the US since he returned to office last year, with the administration’s broad sweep affecting nearly every part of the system.
Among the administration’s efforts to restrict legal immigration were a US$100,000 fee for new H-1B visas, proposed increases to wage thresholds and the tightening of visa rules for foreign students, media and those on exchange programmes.
A federal judge struck down the US$100,000 fee in June, and an appeal court rejected the administration’s attempt to pause that ruling. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
