The United States has revoked more than 250,000 visas since President Donald Trump returned to office, the State Department has said, calling the figure a historic milestone in its drive to tighten entry controls.
Officials told Fox News on September 30 that holders had breached the terms of their visas, committed crimes, called for violence against Americans, defrauded them, abused the immigration system or endangered national security.
“Every visa decision is a national security decision,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said. He added that a US visa was a privilege rather than a right, and that anyone who broke its terms would lose it.
Among the cancellations were 2,300 tied to birth tourism, the practice of pregnant foreign nationals travelling to America so that their children acquire citizenship at birth.
The running total has climbed quickly. The department said it had revoked more than 175,000 visas by August 10, up from roughly 80,000 in November 2025 and 100,000 in January.
Serving politicians have been drawn in as well. On September 28 the department withdrew or restricted visas for 27 officials, former officials and relatives from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru over corruption and drug-trafficking allegations, among them Bolivia’s attorney general, Roger Mariaca.
A far larger tranche is being prepared. Over the summer the department began work on cancelling business and tourist visas issued between 2016 and 2026 to as many as 200,000 foreigners who later applied for asylum, a move Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau put down to public anger at what he called bogus asylum claims.
Europeans have not been exempt. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced in May 2025 that Washington would restrict visas for foreigners it judged complicit in censoring Americans, and in December 2025 he barred five Europeans, among them Thierry Breton, the former European commissioner who drafted the Digital Services Act.
Paris called the bans political retaliation and was supported by Berlin, Madrid and London. Breton replied that all 27 member states had voted for the legislation in 2022.
The department has since set up a Continuous Vetting Center and said it would review the roughly 55 million people who hold valid US visas. The European Commission has pressed ahead with enforcement of the Digital Services Act throughout the dispute.
Most EU member states belong to the US Visa Waiver Programme, so ordinary European tourists travel on an electronic authorisation rather than a visa and sit outside the headline count. Officials, regulators, students and journalists who need a visa do not.
