The US State Department has revoked at least 300 visas, many to foreign students, as it cracks down on people who participated in protests against Israel's war in Gaza, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday. It comes two days after a Turkish doctoral student was arrested on the street and taken to a distant detention centre.
The State Department has focused on students who joined pro-Palestinian protests last year, including former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil over his involvement as a lead negotiator for the student protests at the New York institution.
“We do it every day,” Mr Rubio told reporters during a press conference in Georgetown, Guyana. “Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take it away.”
The administration of President Donald Trump has been outspoken in its disdain for those who took part in the protests, claiming they are anti-Semitic or supportive of Hamas. On Tuesday, immigration enforcement agents wearing hoodies and masks arrested Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University in Massachusetts.
Critics say a video of Ms Ozturk being detained looks more like a kidnapping than a standard arrest. Democratic representative Ayanna Pressley accused the Trump administration of moving to “abduct students with legal status”.
“This is a horrifying violation of Rumeysa's constitutional rights to due process and free speech. She must be immediately released,” Ms Pressley said in a statement.
Ms Ozturk, who was detained while walking to meet friends for iftar, had been moved to an immigration detention centre in Louisiana by the time her lawyer went to court and a judge ordered her to be kept in the state of Massachusetts, US government lawyers said in a court document on Thursday.
Mr Rubio told The National he had not seen video of Ms Ozturk's arrest, but that agents often had to hide their faces to protect their identities.
A senior Department of Homeland Security representative told the AP that Ms Ozturk was detained after an investigation found she “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organisation that relishes the killing of Americans". The department provided no evidence for the claims.
The Trump administration has responded that the US constitutional protection of free speech does not apply to non-citizens and has accused activist students of creating a dangerous atmosphere for Jewish students.
Ms Ozturk wrote an opinion piece in March 2024 that was critical of her university's response to several resolutions on the Gaza war, including acknowledging the “Palestinian genocide”.
“We revoked it,” Mr Rubio said of her visa. “If you apply for a visa to enter the United States to be a student, and you tell us that the reason why you're coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds, but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalising universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus, we're not going to give you a visa.
“If you lie to us and get a visa and then enter the United States, and with that visa, participate in that sort of activity, we're going to take away your visa."
