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The Trump administration is planning to vet all 55 million foreigners who currently hold visas for travel to the United States, a significant expansion of ongoing efforts to clamp down on alleged abuses in the legal immigration system.
In an emailed statement, the State Department said that “continuous vetting” will allow the agency to revoke visas upon finding signs of potential ineligibility, including “things like any indicators of overstays, criminal activity, threats to public safety, engaging in any form of terrorist activity, or providing support to a terrorist organization.”
“We review all available information as part of our vetting, including law enforcement or immigration records or any other information that comes to light after visa issuance,” the statement said.
The Associated Press first reported that the State Department was reviewing visas held by 55 million foreigners.
The Trump administration has overseen a drastic crackdown on immigration. The crackdown initially focused on illegal migration to the United States but has expanded to include reviews of legal migration, such as by people who travel to the country on tourism, work or student visas.
The State Department issued close to 11 million temporary visas, which do not include permanent residency or “green cards,” during the 2024 fiscal year. The vast majority of those visas, 77 percent, were for business or tourism, while roughly 7 percent were issued to students or visiting academics and their families.
In practice, the process of revetting people who already hold a visa—potentially for years, in some cases—is likely to prove time-consuming and logistically complicated, officials have noted. The State Department has also introduced new measures, including the review of social media accounts for hostility toward the United States and antisemitism.
“We are gathering more information than ever,” said a senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to brief the media. The official admitted it was likely that social media vetting would add more time to the review process.
“Time is not my concern, the security of Americans is,” the senior official said.
The news alarmed some immigration experts, who said that visa holders are already subject to enhanced vetting when new information comes to light, including interactions with U.S. law enforcement agencies like arrests or convictions.
David J. Bier, the director of immigration policy at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in D.C., said it sounded like the administration wanted to “proactively conduct reviews of social media posts and revoke visas based not on conduct but speech.”
“I doubt that’s feasible for everyone, but I suspect that these reviews will be done in a discriminatory manner targeting immigrants with certain backgrounds and in certain visa categories or specific people they want an excuse to revoke,” Bier added.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security that is responsible for initially granting visas, wrote in a policy alert this week that it was updating its guidance to say that it will vet applicants for links to “anti-American or terrorist” groups or those that “support or promote antisemitic terrorism.”
Foreign students have become a focal point for the administration, which announced earlier this week that it had revoked more than 6,000 student visas for overstays and legal violations, including roughly 200 to 300 for what it described as “terrorism.”
The administration has also sought to revoke visas and deport people who took part in campus protests against the war in Gaza, claiming in some instances that these people had engaged in antisemitic behavior or shown support for designated terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
The senior State Department official declined say how many of the student visas revoked were related to activities at campus protests.
“There are thousands of people on visas in the United States who have exercised their freedom of speech who are not these people who we have revoked,” the senior official said.
In the statement, the State Department said that under President Donald Trump’s “commitment to protect U.S. national security and public safety,” it had revoked more than twice as many visas as during the same period last year, and roughly four times as many student visas.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio also announced Thursday that he will suspend the issuance of visas to commercial truck drivers after a fatal crash involving a semitruck that allegedly tried to make an unauthorized U-turn on a Florida highway. The truck driver is an Indian national who is in the country illegally, according to officials.
“The increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on U.S. roads is endangering American lives and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers,” Rubio wrote on X.
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