The Trump administration’s State Department confirmed that it revoked its first student visa over alleged criminal activity tied to a pro-Hamas protest.
The State Department told Fox News the foreign student was involved in a disruptive college campus demonstration. However, it did not reveal the student’s identity or which school he or she attended, citing “legal constraints.”
‘Zero tolerance for foreign visitors who support terrorists.’
“Yesterday evening, we revoked the first visa of an alien who was previously cited for criminal behavior in connection with Hamas-supporting disruptions,” the department said. “This individual was a university student. [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] will proceed with removing this person from the country.”
The State Department’s move comes on the heels of President Donald Trump stating that foreign students participating in pro-Hamas protests should have their visas pulled for supporting the terrorist group.
In January, Trump vowed to “deport Hamas sympathizers and revoke student visas” to combat anti-Semitism.
“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you. I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before,” he stated.
Despite many disruptive pro-Hamas protests on college campuses under the previous administration, President Joe Biden’s State Department did not revoke any of the 100,000 student visas it reviewed, an official told Axios.
The Trump administration accused Biden of “turn[ing] a blind eye to this coordinated assault on public order” and “refus[ing] to protect the civil rights of Jewish Americans, especially students.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced this week that the department will launch an AI-powered “Catch and Revoke” system to yank the visas of those supporting terrorist organizations, such as Hamas.
On Thursday, Rubio wrote in a post on X, “Those who support designated terrorist organizations, including Hamas, threaten our national security. The United States has zero tolerance for foreign visitors who support terrorists. Violators of U.S. law — including international students — face visa denial or revocation, and deportation.”
The State Department told Axios, “It would be negligent for the department that takes national security seriously to ignore publicly available information about [visa] applicants in terms of AI tools. … AI is one of the resources available to the government that’s very different from where we were technologically decades ago.”
Earlier this week, the American Civil Liberties Union wrote an open letter to colleges and universities claiming that the Trump administration is attempting to pressure school officials into “censoring and punishing non-citizen scholars and students for their speech and scholarship.” The ACLU urged American colleges “to protect campus speech.”
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