US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday he has canceled more than 300 visas in a crackdown on anti-Israel activism and vowed to keep doing so, brushing aside furor after masked agents snatched a student.
Rubio, a staunch supporter of Israel, said that he personally signed off on every visa revocation and rejected charges he was violating US protections of free speech.
Asked about a report on the number of visas he has stripped, mostly for students, Rubio said: "Maybe more than 300 at this point. We do it every day."
"Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas," he told reporters on a visit to Guyana.
"At some point I hope we run out because we've gotten rid of them," Rubio said.
Since his return to the White House on January 20, President Donald Trump has moved aggressively against student activists and universities over the disruptive protests that swept US college campuses in response to the Gaza war.
Earlier this week, a video went viral of a 30-year-old Turkish graduate student, Rumeysa Ozturk, being detained by masked, plain-clothed figures near Tufts University in Massachusetts.
Ozturk had penned an op-ed in a student newspaper decrying Israel's actions in Gaza as "genocide." She now faces deportation.
Immigration lawyer Mahsa Khanbabai complained that Ozturk had been taken to a detention center in the southern state of Louisiana, despite a court order that she remain in Massachusetts, and was denied access to legal representation.
"Masked DHS agents unlawfully arrested my client," she said, referring to the Department of Homeland Security.
Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat from Massachusetts, 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," Pressley said in a statement.
Visas a 'gift'
Rubio, asked if Ozturk was being targeted over her writing in a student newspaper, said that she met his criteria for visa revocation without providing details.
"I would caution you against solely going off of what the media has been to identify" for the visa decision, the former senator told reporters later on his plane to his home city of Miami.
Rubio said that visas were a "gift" at the discretion of the State Department and not subject to any judicial review.
He said it was "crazy" to allow in the United States students who were "supportive of a group that just slaughtered babies," a reference to the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 that triggered massive Israeli retaliation.
Asked if the Trump administration would go after anyone who presents dissenting views, Rubio said, "If you're complaining about paper straws, then we're obviously not going to yank a visa over that."
"The overwhelming majority of student visas in this country will not be revoked," he said.
The most high-profile deportation case is Mahmoud Khalil, who led protests at Columbia University in New York. He was also taken to Louisiana ahead of deportation proceedings, despite being a US permanent resident.
Khalil's supporters reject the characterisation that he supports Hamas and note that he has spoken out against antisemitism.
The US government has since pointed to technicalities in his original student visa.
Rubio contends that student activists have made education intolerable for Jewish students.
"If 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," Rubio said in Guyana.
AFP