By Daphne Psaledakis, Patricia Zengerle and Simon Lewis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday the number of visas he has revoked was probably in the thousands, adding that he believed there was still more to do.
Republican President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to ramp up deportations and revoke student visas as part of its wide-ranging efforts to fulfill his hardline immigration agenda.
“I don’t know the latest count, but we probably have more to do,” Rubio told a Senate appropriations subcommittee that oversees foreign affairs.
Asked to give an estimate, he said it was probably in the thousands at this point, an increase from March, when he said the State Department may have revoked more than 300 visas.
Rubio said the 300 revoked visas were a combination of student and visitor visas. He said he signed each action.
“A visa is not a right. It’s a privilege,” Rubio said on Tuesday.
Trump administration officials have said student visa and green card holders are subject to deportation over their support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza, calling their actions a threat to U.S. foreign policy and accusing them of being pro-Hamas.
Trump’s critics have called the effort an attack on free speech rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“I know this will be adjudicated in court, but the idea that one individual could on their opinion of someone’s future activity or expected activity … toss somebody’s visa, seems to me an extraordinary violation of due process,” Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley told Rubio at the hearing.
Earlier this month, a Tufts University student from Turkey was held for over six weeks in an immigration detention center in Louisiana after co-writing an opinion piece criticizing her school’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza. She was released from custody after a federal judge granted her bail.
U.S. District Judge William Sessions during a hearing in Burlington, Vermont, ordered the immediate release of Rumeysa Ozturk, who is at the center of one of the highest-profile cases to emerge from Trump’s campaign to deport pro-Palestinian activists on American campuses.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Daphne Psaledakis and Simon Lewis; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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