State Department Says It Has Revoked Over 250,000 Visas Since Trump Took Office

A Quarter-Million Visas, By the Agency's Own Count

The State Department says it has revoked more than 250,000 visas since President Donald Trump took office, according to a State Department official who spoke to Fox News Digital. Spokesperson Tommy Pigott called it a "historic milestone."

"Under President Trump and Secretary Rubio, the State Department has now revoked more than 250,000 visas, a historic milestone that reflects our unwavering commitment to protecting the American people," Pigott said. "Every visa decision is a national security decision."

That figure is the department's own tally. No independent body has audited it, and the agency has not published a full public breakdown of every category. What it has disclosed: 2,300 revocations tied to birth tourism, the practice of pregnant foreign nationals traveling to the U.S. specifically to give birth so their child gets automatic citizenship. Bull Source, citing the same State Department account relayed through Fox News Digital, reported that more than 175,000 of the total came in August alone. That single-month number has not been independently verified beyond the agency's own account.

What the Revocations Cover

Pigott and the unnamed State Department official told Fox News Digital the revocations span visa holders who violated visa terms, committed crimes, called for violence against the U.S. or Americans, defrauded Americans, abused the immigration system, or endangered national security. Those are broad categories, and the department has not detailed how many revocations fall into each bucket.

On Monday, September 28, the department revoked the visas of 27 Latin American officials, former officials, and their family members, citing corruption accusations. Those individuals are from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. These are allegations behind an executive-branch visa action, not criminal convictions in a U.S. court. Visa revocation does not require a conviction or even a formal charge. Consular officers have long had wide discretion under federal immigration law to pull a visa without judicial review.

Separately, over the summer the administration began preparing to revoke business and tourist visas held by as many as 200,000 foreigners who later applied for asylum. That effort would target B1 and B2 visas issued between 2016 and 2026. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said at the time that Americans were "fed up" with "bogus asylum claims." That 200,000-person effort is still described as a preparation, not a completed action, and is separate from the 250,000 already-revoked figure.

Birth Tourism and the 14th Amendment

Birth tourism itself isn't illegal under current law. Children born on U.S. soil to foreign nationals, including those who traveled here specifically to give birth, have automatic citizenship under the 14th Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court's 1898 ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. The Trump administration treats the practice as an abuse of that constitutional guarantee and has made it a target of visa vetting rather than a legal challenge to birthright citizenship itself in this instance.

The Fair Question Here

Civil liberties advocates and immigration attorneys would reasonably ask how consular officers are deciding who gets swept into a revocation with no court hearing and no independent appeal process built into the system Fox News Digital described. A visa holder flagged for "abusing the immigration system" or "endangering national security" doesn't get a public accounting of the specific evidence, and the 250,000 figure itself comes from the same agency doing the revoking, with no outside verification cited in these reports.

At the same time, a visa is a discretionary grant of entry, not a constitutional right, and consular officers have held broad revocation authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act for decades regardless of which administration is in office. The scale of 250,000 is notably larger than prior years, but Fox News Digital's reporting does not include a year-over-year comparison from State Department data to show how this stacks up against revocation totals under the Biden or first Trump administrations.

What's Still Unclear

The department has not released a public, itemized breakdown showing how many of the 250,000 revocations were for crimes, how many for fraud, how many for terrorism-related speech, and how many for visa-term violations like overstays. Until that breakdown exists, the topline number is a claim of scale, not a documented accounting open to outside review. Whether Congress or immigration courts will seek that breakdown, or whether any of the 27 Latin American officials will legally challenge their revocations, remains to be seen.