The State Department said Wednesday that it has revoked more than 250,000 visas since President Trump took office, up from the more than 175,000 it reported in August.

Tommy Pigott, the department's spokesman, gave the figure in an interview with Fox News Digital at the White House and repeated it in a post on his official X account. He called the total "a historic milestone that reflects our unwavering commitment to protecting the American people."

A State Department official told Fox News Digital that the revocations covered visa holders who broke the terms of their visas, committed crimes, called for violence against the United States or Americans, defrauded Americans, abused the immigration system or endangered national security. The total includes 2,300 visas revoked in connection with birth tourism, in which pregnant foreign nationals travel to the United States to give birth so that their children automatically become citizens.

"Every visa decision is a national security decision," Pigott said. "Through continuous vetting on a scale never seen before, we are identifying and removing those who commit crimes, support terrorism, defraud Americans, or abuse our immigration system." A U.S. visa, he added, is "a privilege, not a right," and "if you violate the terms of that privilege, you will lose it."

The department had reported more than 100,000 revocations by January. When it announced on Aug. 10 that the count had passed 175,000, it said most of the cases followed what it called law enforcement encounters, with assault, driving under the influence, theft and drug offenses among the leading causes.

By the numbers available, the pace is far higher than under the previous administration. Newsweek, drawing on independently reported figures, put revocations by President Joe Biden's State Department at roughly 40,000 in 2024. The magazine also noted that the department does not keep a consistent, publicly reported annual tally, which makes comparisons with earlier presidencies difficult.

A revoked visa is not a deportation. A visa generally lets a foreign national seek admission to the United States, while separate immigration procedures govern a person's legal status and any removal from the country. The figures released Wednesday did not say how many of the affected visa holders were in the United States when their visas were pulled.

The new total follows several targeted moves. On Monday the department revoked the visas of 27 Latin American officials, former officials and family members over accusations of corruption. The officials are from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Last week Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa restrictions on people who engage in or facilitate birth tourism, a policy that reaches so-called visa fixers who coach foreigners on ways to lie or exploit U.S. immigration law. "By restricting visa issuance of those who both engage in and profit from this fraud, we are sending a clear message," Rubio said at the time.

Over the summer, the administration also began preparing to revoke business and tourist visas held by as many as 200,000 foreigners who had applied for asylum, aiming at B1 and B2 visas issued between 2016 and 2026.

Civil liberties groups and immigration advocates have criticized some of the administration's visa actions, particularly those involving foreign students and academics whose political speech drew government scrutiny. Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University doctoral student, lost her visa after co-writing an opinion article that criticized the university's response to the war in Gaza, and an immigration judge ended removal proceedings against her in February after finding that the Department of Homeland Security had not established legal grounds to deport her.

The administration has rejected the characterization that it generally revokes visas simply over political views, arguing that foreigners can lose immigration privileges when their conduct implicates national security or other grounds set out in immigration law.