The U.S. State Department has revoked over 6,000 student visas this year after those who held them either broke the law or supported terrorism, a department official said.
In a statement to Fox News, the senior official detailed the situation and what led up to the revocations, the outlet reported on Sunday.
“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. About 4,000 visas alone have been revoked because these visitors broke the law while visiting our country, including records of assault and DUIs,” the official explained.
President Donald Trump’s administration has zeroed in on immigration and revoking visas of students going to schools across the nation. Some of those individuals have been linked to anti-Israel demonstrations.
“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,” per the Fox article.
“The crackdown on student visas aligns with several executive orders President Donald Trump signed in January, aimed at safeguarding the U.S. from foreign terrorists and other national security threats, along with combating antisemitism,” the report added.
In April, a pair of lawsuits accused Trump of “unlawfully” revoking numerous foreign student visas, per Breitbart News.
The State Department official told Fox that President Joe Biden’s (D) administration revoked some visas, therefore, it was not something new.
One hundred days into Trump’s second term, the department revoked the visas of 4,000 foreign students, Breitbart News reported in late April, noting that 90 percent of them had criminal records.
In June, Trump denied F-1 education visas to foreigners hoping to find places at Harvard University.
The Breitbart News article noted that “The M and F visas are used by more than 400,000 migrants each year to get white-collar work permits via the quasi-legal Curricular Practical Training and the Optional Practical Training programs. Those programs are a springboard for migrants seeking to get white-collar H-1B visas, U.S. careers, and U.S. citizenship. The J visa is often used by migrants who want to displace Americans from jobs at universities’ science laboratories.”
