The United States Department of State has suspended all visitor visas for individuals from Gaza following a controversial social media campaign by far-right activist Laura Loomer.
On Saturday, the State Department announced the immediate suspension of all Gaza visitor visas, stating: “All visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to issue a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas in recent days.”
The decision came just 24 hours after Loomer posted videos on social media platforms showing injured Palestinian children arriving at U.S. airports for medical treatment.
The visa suspension occurs amid what the United Nations describes as “widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease” in Gaza. The WHO reports that Gaza’s health system has been in collapse, with a “relentless and systematic decimation of hospitals”. According to UNICEF, more than 17,000 children have been killed and 33,000 injured in Gaza over the past 21 months.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the suspension on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” claiming he had received evidence from “multiple congressional offices” suggesting that “some of the organizations bragging about and involved in acquiring these visas have strong links to terrorist groups like Hamas.” However, Rubio provided no specifics about this alleged evidence or named the organizations in question.
In Gaza, critical medical shortages have reached severe levels, with 52% of medicines and 68% of consumables at zero stock. The Palestinian Health Ministry reports that over 62,000 Palestinians have been killed and 156,230 injured in the ongoing conflict, with 1,965 people killed while seeking aid at distribution points.
Laura Loomer, described as a far-right conspiracy theorist and Trump ally, took credit for the policy change, posting: “It’s amazing how fast we can get results from the Trump administration.” Her social media posts falsely characterized the medical evacuations as a “national security threat” and demanded that officials responsible for approving the visas be fired.
“Hopefully all GAZANS will be added to President Trump’s travel ban,” she wrote. “There are doctors in other countries. The US is not the world’s hospital!”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) denounced the suspension as another example of the “intentional cruelty” of the Trump administration.
“Blocking Palestinian children injured by American weapons from coming to America for medical treatment is the latest sign that the intentional cruelty of President Trump’s ‘Israel First’ administration knows no bounds,” CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad. “It is also deeply ironic that the Trump administration would ban Palestinian children seeking treatment while rolling out the red carpet for racists and indicted war criminals from the Israeli government. This ban is just the latest example of our government’s complicity with Israel’s genocide, which is increasingly rejected by the American people.”
