The administration plans to strip roughly 200,000 B1 and B2 visas from visitors who filed for asylum after arriving, expanding an already aggressive revocation effort and setting up likely legal battles over whether tourist visas can be used as a backdoor to permanent stays.
The Trump administration is moving to revoke about 200,000 business and tourist visas held by foreigners who entered as short-term visitors and later filed asylum claims. Officials say targeted visas were issued between 2016 and 2026, and the action would be the largest single mass visa revocation in American history. The State Department is coordinating with the Department of Homeland Security on the effort.
State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott confirmed the scope of the effort:
“We are coordinating with DHS to identify and revoke the nonimmigrant visas of foreigners who have come to the United States claiming to be short-term visitors, but then file for asylum to stay here permanently.”
The rationale offered by officials is plain: B1 and B2 visas exist for temporary travel, business, and family visits, not as a shortcut to long-term residence. Over the past decade thousands of travelers have entered on tourist visas, filed asylum claims before their visas expired, and then remained in the United States while cases dragged on. That pattern has produced long delays, legal limbo, and a sense that the asylum system is being used in ways it was never meant to be used.
The new revocations would build on an earlier push. Roughly 175,000 visas have already been revoked since the start of the president’s second term, mostly over criminal activity or public opposition to U.S. policies. Adding 200,000 more would nearly double that total and underscore a clear enforcement-first approach to immigration under this administration.
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau laid out the administration’s view in a post on X, arguing the asylum system has been stretched beyond its intended purpose. He wrote:
“People in the US and all over the world are fed up with bogus asylum claims. Asylum isn’t supposed to be a loophole to circumvent immigration laws; rather, it’s supposed to provide a narrow safe harbor for persons persecuted because of their ‘race, religion, nationality,…'”
Landau and other officials contend that years-long court backlogs let applicants put down roots, complicating enforcement and making removal politically harder. The administration paints the pattern as a structural problem: legal visas are being converted into de facto immigration paths that few intended.
The administration has used a specific case to illustrate the issue. Officials cited Humberto Coral, a Colombian national who arrived on a tourist visa in 2015 and filed for asylum just before that visa expired. According to the description, Coral received a work permit under prior policy and renewed it for about a decade while remaining in the United States and speaking publicly about political matters in Colombia.
Revoking a visa is not the same as deporting someone on the spot, and officials acknowledge the legal distinction. A visa revocation removes the legal cover that made the person a short-term visitor, but pending asylum claims may be recategorized rather than immediately dismissed. Still, lack of a valid visa changes the legal posture and strengthens incentives to depart voluntarily.
The administration has also pushed other immigration measures in parallel, from executive orders aimed at birth tourism and birthright citizenship to proposals affecting H-1B employers. One proposal under consideration would impose a $103,265 fee on employers hiring foreign workers through the H-1B program, drawing attention to a broader strategy of tightening legal immigration channels while curbing perceived abuses.
Legal challenges are expected, and courts have already blocked some prior steps. A federal judge struck down a 75-country visa pause implemented under the administration, and observers expect lawsuits over any mass revocation that targets asylum filers who originally entered on visitor visas. The administration, however, points to recent Supreme Court decisions that lean toward more executive authority on Temporary Protected Status and asylum processing.
The broader argument being made by enforcement supporters is straightforward: when hundreds of thousands of visitor visas turn into long-term stays, the system is being gamed. Republicans pushing the revocation see it as an overdue correction that restores the meaning of short-term visas and reinforces the rule of law on immigration.
