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Rubio begins revoking visas for terrorist-supporting foreign students

March 7, 2025 | | Print Article

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has begun revoking the visas of foreigners who openly and brazenly support the terrorist group Hamas.

“Those who support designated terrorist organizations, including Hamas, threaten our national security,” Rubio announced in a tweet Thursday.

“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,” his tweet continued.

Look:

According to a State Department official who spoke with Fox News’ Bill Melugin, the first visa revocation involved a foreign student “who was previously cited for criminal behavior in connection with Hamas-supporting disruptions” across America’s college campuses.

“I’m told this person was a university student, and ‘ICE will proceed with removing this person from the country,'” Melugin reported on Thursday.

The revocation reportedly came after the State Department reviewed 100,000 visas. In conducting the review, the department also discovered that the Biden administration had revoked zero visas despite the pro-Hamas protests having erupted during its tenure.

The State Department is reportedly being assisted in its efforts by artificial technology.

“Using AI tools, officials intend to pore through the social media accounts of foreign student visas and assess whether there’s evidence of sympathies toward Hamas in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack,” according to the New York Post.

“That effort, dubbed ‘Catch and Revoke,’ will reportedly encompass a review of news articles to spot names of foreign nationals who engaged in anti-semitic activity,” the reporting continues.

In a statement made to Axios, an anonymous senior State Department official defended the use of AI for catching these terror groupies.

“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,” they said. “AI is one of the resources available to the government that’s very different from where we were technologically decades ago.”

The official added that if the department finds social media posts from a foreign national that appear “pro-Hamas” and/or endorse the Oct. 7th terror attack, that could be grounds for revocation.

“Under President Trump, the Immigration Nationality Act is great again,” they said.

Axios notes that, polling-wise, this revocation of visas probably won’t backfire on the Trump administration: “Voters tend to disfavor rallies critical of Israel, and in some surveys, a plurality of voters doesn’t distinguish between support for Hamas and support for the Palestinian people.”

“We’re not doing this for the polling, but it never hurts to be on the right side of an issue,” an anonymous White House adviser added.

Critics have nevertheless claimed that the effort will trigger backlash from Americans.

“This should concern all Americans. This is a First Amendment and freedom of speech issue and the administration will overplay its hand,” American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee executive director Abed Ayoub told The Guardian. “Americans won’t like this. They’ll view this as capitulating free speech rights for a foreign nation.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is also upset.

“It is disturbing to see the White House threatening freedom of speech and academic freedom on US college campuses so blatantly,” ACLU legal director Cecillia Wang said. “Trump’s latest coercion campaign, attempting to turn university administrators against their own students and faculty, harkens back to the McCarthy era and is at odds with American constitutional values and the basic mission of universities.”

This new effort by the Trump administration State Department comes days after President Donald Trump vowed to revoke federal funding for colleges and universities that allow pro-Hamas activity on campus.

“All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Vivek Saxena
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