(NewsNation) — Chinese students with ties to their country’s Communist Party or studying in “critical fields” will have their visas revoked, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media Wednesday.
Rubio’s statement came amid the Trump administration’s trade war with China and an order for U.S. embassies and consulates to pause scheduling visa interviews for international students while considering ways to revise social media screening and vetting for applicants.
“The U.S. will begin revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” Rubio said on the social platform X.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” Rubio said. “We will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong.”
The State Department issued an internal cable Tuesday, signed by Rubio, stating that “effective immediately, in preparation for an expansion of required social media screening and vetting, consular sections should not add any additional student or exchange visitor (F, M, and J) visa appointment capacity until further guidance is issued [separate telegram], which we anticipate in the coming days,” multiple outlets reported.
Trump administration’s ongoing visa battle with Harvard
Earlier this year, the administration revoked the visas of thousands of international students.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement later restored more than 1,500 foreign student visa registrations in its reporting system.
Last week, the Department of Homeland Security moved to terminate Harvard University’s student and exchange visitor program, barring the Ivy League school from enrolling international students. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said the university’s international students would need to transfer to another institution or risk jeopardizing their legal status.
The Trump administration and Harvard attorneys are scheduled to face off for the first time in a Boston federal courtroom on Thursday for in-person arguments about the ban.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump suggested imposing a 15% cap on the percentage of foreign students that Harvard and other U.S. higher education institutions can admit.
While speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump suggested that international students take up too much of the student body and raised issues over some of the foreign students he called “troublemakers.”
“These countries aren’t helping us. They’re not investing in Harvard … We are. So why would 31% — why would a number so big,” he said. “I think they should have a cap of maybe around 15%, not 31%.”
“We have people [who] want to go to Harvard and other schools, [but] they can’t get in because we have foreign students there. But I want to make sure that the foreign students are people that can love our country. We don’t want to see shopping centers exploding. We don’t want to see the kind of riots that you had,” Trump said. “And I’ll tell you what, many of those students didn’t go anywhere. Many of those students were troublemakers caused by the radical left lunatics in this country.”
He also said, without elaborating, that he doesn’t want “radical people” coming to the U.S. as students and “making trouble in our country.”
NewsNation partner The Hill contributed to this report.
