WASHINGTON – Donald Trump’s administration seems to be aggressive when it comes to visa revocations as hundreds of visas have been revoked in recent weeks.
Though media reports implied that the government was revoking visas of foreigners, a latest statement by the Secretary of State reflects the scale of such moves.
Secretary of State, Marco Rubio confirmed on Thursday that the government may have revoked over 300 visas, warning that the administration was looking every day for “these lunatics”.
The statement came after immigration authorities detained and revoked the visa of a Turkish student named Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts University; the encounter between the student and the immigration officials was also captured and the footage is a shocking indication of Trump’s aggressive policies at play.
Rubio made the remarks in response to a question regarding Rumeysa Ozturk who was detained on Tuesday evening in Somerville, Massachusetts, outside of Boston, by masked and plainclothes agents.
The only ‘crime’ of the student was that she raised voice against the atrocities committed in Palestine by Israel.
“It might be more than 300 at this point. We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas,” Rubio said at a press conference in Guyana, without further elaboration about the identities of individuals whose visas had been revoked.
Speaking to reporters in a separate interaction, Rubio said the 300 revoked visas were a combination of student and visitor visas. .
“At some point, I hope we run out because we’ve gotten rid of all of them, but we’re looking every day for these lunatics that are tearing things up,” he asserted.
Rubio did not clarify the specific action taken by Ozturk that led to her visa revocation; however, the fact that another Columbia University student was detained for pro-Palestinian protests implies that the pro-Palestine stance was the main reason.
The top diplomat said the administration would take away any visa that has been previously issued if students would participate in actions such as ‘vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus.’
Rubio explained that what was presented to him about Ozturk case had met the standard of “people that are supportive of movements that run counter to the foreign policy of the United States.”
It bears mentioning that Ozturk was a Fulbright Scholar and was enrolled in Tufts’ doctoral program for Child Study and Human Development. She was in the US on an F-1 visa to study and her detention followed an opinion piece in the school’s student paper co-authored by her.
In that opinion piece published in the Tufts Daily, the student criticized the Israeli regime and took aim at the country for the genocide in Palestine.
