Washington cancels over 300,000 visas during Trump's second term

The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday that the administration of President Donald Trump had canceled more than 300,000 visas to enter the United States during his second term, as the federal government continues its strict campaign against immigration.

This figure reflects an acceleration in the pace of visa cancellations over recent weeks. In an update issued on August 10, the State Department estimated that more than 175,000 visas had been canceled since the start of Trump’s current term in January 2025.

Trump says the goal of his immigration campaign and deportation operations is to strengthen domestic security.

Human rights advocates argue that the campaign violates due process and freedom of expression, creating an unsafe environment, particularly for ethnic minorities, who have expressed concerns about racial profiling.

State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott, announcing the latest statistics on the platform X, said the Trump administration “has canceled more visas at a faster rate than any other administration in history.”

Among the visa cancellations particularly condemned by human rights advocates are those affecting foreign pro-Palestinian protesters who demonstrated against Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip, and those targeting foreigners because of their social media comments regarding the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Human rights advocates say the government has invoked national security reasons to target critics and exploited individual cases of fraud to broadly target immigrants from certain countries, such as the Somali-American community in Minnesota.

Trump focused his 2024 election campaign on stopping illegal immigration, but his administration has also made legal immigration more difficult—for example, by imposing steep fees on certain work visas.