The Trump administration has revoked more than 175,000 visas since President Donald Trump returned to office last year, according to the State Department, and officials say criminal conduct and violations of visa rules account for much of that enormous number.
“Under President Trump, the United States Department of State has revoked more than 175,000 visas from foreign nationals who violated the terms of their visas, committed crimes, called for violence against U.S. citizens, defrauded Americans, abused our immigration system, or endangered national security,” the department told Fox News on Monday.
The department said most of the revocations involved encounters with law enforcement, with assault, driving under the influence, theft and drug offenses among the leading causes.
Other cases involved reckless driving, sexual assault, child abuse, fraud, embezzlement and additional crimes, according to the department.
The sheer number illustrates just how aggressively the administration is using an authority Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly emphasized: A visa isn’t an entitlement.
Rubio made that point particularly clear during a February news conference in Hungary.
“I’ve said this repeatedly. I don’t know why it’s so hard for some to comprehend it, so let me repeat it again,” Rubio said. “A visa — no one is entitled to a visa. There is no constitutional right to a visa.”
Rubio described a visa as permission granted to a foreign national to enter the United States under particular conditions.
“If you enter our country as a visitor, as a visitor in our country — be it a student, a tourist, a journalist, whatever you want to be — and you undertake activities that are against the national interest, the national security of the United States, we will take away your visa,” he said.
“In fact, if we knew you were going to do it, we probably wouldn’t have given you your visa.”
Another category is now receiving particular attention from the administration: so-called “birth tourism.”
The State Department said a U.S. embassy in North Africa revoked more than 100 visas belonging to parents who had participated in birth-tourism arrangements, in which foreign nationals travel to the United States primarily to give birth on American soil.
That disclosure comes only days after Trump signed two executive orders taking another approach to one of the most contentious constitutional fights of his presidency: birthright citizenship.
Trump’s previous attempt suffered a major defeat at the Supreme Court in June.
The 14th Amendment states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Trump’s position has focused on the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” His administration has argued for a narrower interpretation of which children born to foreign nationals automatically qualify for citizenship.
The Supreme Court rejected the administration’s earlier approach in a 6-3 ruling.
Trump acknowledged that setback Thursday but made clear that he wasn’t abandoning the issue.
He called the ruling a “very, very unfortunate decision” and told reporters at the White House that his administration was “making adjustments.”
One of those adjustments specifically targets birth tourism.
According to Trump’s new executive order, “Birth tourism operators use deceptive advertisements and inducements to entice foreign nationals to travel to the United States for the purpose of giving birth on American soil.”
The order argues that America’s nonimmigrant visa categories exist for specific temporary purposes, including tourism, study, exchange programs and temporary employment.
“The immigration laws of the United States establish discrete categories of temporary nonimmigrant visas to allow foreign visitors into the United States for study, exchange, temporary employment, tourism, and other transitory activities that are now exploited by birth tourism operators,” it states.
The administration’s argument therefore attacks the practice from two directions.
One is the much larger constitutional question of whether a child born under those circumstances automatically acquires American citizenship. That approach has already encountered formidable opposition in the courts.
The other concerns the parents themselves and whether they obtained or used temporary visas for their legitimate intended purposes.
The State Department’s announcement indicates that the administration is already acting on the second front.