More than 300 student visas have been revoked as the Trump administration works to crack down on student protesters who express support for Hamas and other terrorist organizations.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at a press conference Thursday that the administration is revoking visas from “lunatics” “every day” and that the number may be over 300. The news comes as the administration has taken drastic steps to put an end to the often violent antisemitic protests that have taken place on college campuses across the U.S. since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, 2023.
“It might be more than 300 at this point,” Rubio said. “We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa.”
Several protesters have already been deported and multiple others have been detained as they await deportation measures. There are over 1.5 million student visa holders in the U.S., according to Axios, which first reported the number of visas revoked.
Protests at universities like Columbia resulted in hundreds of discrimination complaints as multi-week-long encampments were allowed to remain, campus buildings were overtaken and Jewish students reported harassment and assaults while university administrators stood by and did nothing. Both independent and Congressional investigations found many of these schools failed to enact punishments for students involved in the at times violent incidents, and sometimes even expressed support for the pro-Hamas students.
Several lawsuits were also filed against universities around the country as Jewish students reported feeling unsafe and being unable to access parts of campus.
The Trump administration in recent weeks opened investigations into multiple schools due to their apparent lack of response to the discrimination concerns, and has moved to strip Columbia of $400 million for failing to protect Jewish students. The university has since promised a commitment to enforcing its policies and claims to have punished several students, though it refused to answer a Daily Caller News Foundation inquiry on how many students have been suspended, expelled or had their degrees revoked.
Recent court decisions threaten to throw a wrench in the administration’s agenda to deport foreign radicals, with one order preventing the Trump administration from detaining an individual facing deportation measures and another order preventing Columbia from handing over student disciplinary records to Congress.
The State Department did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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