Trump Administration Halts Visas For People From Gaza After Laura Loomer Questions Arrivals

Conservative activist Laura Loomer complained on social media about children from Gaza arriving in the U.S. for medical treatment and questioned how they got visas.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A day after conservative activist Laura Loomer posted videos on social media of children from Gaza arriving in the U.S. for medical treatment and questioning how they got visas, the State Department said it was halting all visitor visas for people from Gaza pending a review.

The State Department said Saturday the visas would be stopped while it looks into how “a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas” were issued in recent days. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday told “Face the Nation” on CBS that the action came after ”outreach from multiple congressional offices asking questions about it.”

Rubio said there were “just a small number” of the visas issued to children in need of medical aid but that they were accompanied by adults. The congressional offices reached out with evidence that “some of the organizations bragging about and involved in acquiring these visas have strong links to terrorist groups like Hamas,” he asserted, without providing evidence or naming those organizations.

As a result, he said, “we are going to pause this program and reevaluate how those visas are being vetted and what relationship, if any, has there been by these organizations to the process of acquiring those visas.”

Loomer on Friday posted videos on X of children from Gaza arriving earlier this month in San Francisco and Houston for medical treatment with the aid of an organization called HEAL Palestine. “Despite the US saying we are not accepting Palestinian ‘refugees’ into the United States under the Trump administration,” these people from Gaza were able to travel to the U.S., she said.