State Department pauses immigrant visas, prepares 200,000 revocations

Policy targets foreigners deemed potential drains on public coffers

The State Department has paused all immigrant visa applications worldwide and is separately preparing to revoke the business and tourism visas of up to 200,000 foreigners who applied for asylum, marking a turn in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown from people who entered the country illegally to those who come through legal channels.

The State Department’s pause applies to immigrant visa processing globally while consular officers are briefed on a new policy intended to keep out foreigners considered potential drains on public coffers, the Associated Press reported. The department did not immediately say how long the pause would last.

The planned revocation targets the B1 and B2 visa categories — the classifications that cover business and tourism travel — held by foreigners who subsequently applied for asylum in the United States. The AP first reported the planned action earlier this week. If carried out at the reported scale, the action would be the largest single mass visa revocation in U.S. history, the wire service reported.

The State Department is conducting the planned revocations in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security, according to the AP’s earlier reporting this week. State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott, in remarks reported by the AP, framed the rationale as targeting foreigners “who have come to the United States claiming to be short-term visitors, but then file for asylum to stay here permanently.”

Legal challenges are expected. Any litigation would test the administration’s claim that visa holders who later sought asylum misrepresented their original intent at the time of application.

The two actions are tied together by a single underlying principle, according to Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute. “The thing linking them is a general philosophy that immigration is bad for the United States and that the Trump administration is looking for all of the ways it can to button down our immigration system to allow in fewer people,” Gelatt said.

The pause and the planned revocation arrive against a backdrop of accelerating visa revocations. The State Department announced earlier this month that it had canceled more than 175,000 visas since President Donald Trump returned to office, a pace four times higher than during Joe Biden’s final year in the White House, according to a tally the department released.

The expanded enforcement marks a shift in focus from unauthorized border crossings to the legal immigration system, including tourist, business, and family-based pathways — a shift that, in Gelatt’s characterization, reflects the administration’s stated goal of admitting fewer people across every channel.

The current actions follow reporting MSI published earlier this week documenting the State Department’s preparation to revoke up to 200,000 business and tourism visas held by foreigners who subsequently applied for asylum.