seekers

If the action happens, it will be the largest single mass revocation of visas in US history, AP reports.

The United States is preparing to cancel business and tourism visas of up to 200,000 foreigners who have applied for or are seeking asylum in the country, according to the Associated Press news agency.

The AP, citing State Department documents and interviews with two US officials, reported on Monday that if the plan goes ahead, it would be the “largest single mass revocation of visas” in the country’s history.

It said the State Department is expected to announce the action within the coming weeks, working in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

It would target so-called B1 and B2 visas issued between 2016 and 2026, whose holders have sought asylum or are now seeking asylum.

“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,” said State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott.

Officials cited by the AP said the revocations would not automatically trigger deportations.

Instead, most people with pending asylum cases would be shifted into a different immigration category, effectively stripping their business or tourist designation while their cases proceed.

In a social media post on Monday, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau called out people who he said try to use tourist and business visas to get into the US and then apply for asylum.

“People in the US and all over the world are fed up with bogus asylum claims,” Landau wrote on X. “Asylum isn’t supposed to be a loophole to circumvent immigration law.”

Since President Donald Trump took office for his second term last year, his administration has steadily ramped up restrictions on visa applicants – demanding more information about their social media histories, requiring the posting of expensive bonds for the processing of visas, and outright banning the issuance of visas to citizens of certain countries.

In the past 18 months, the State Department has also revoked about 175,000 visas for people who have been convicted or accused of crimes ranging from drunk driving to rape and robbery, as well as for people who have spoken out publicly against US policies, particularly in the Middle East.

LOS ANGELES — A lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges that the Trump administration’s immigration agencies have been sharing confidential information about Iranian asylum seekers with the Iranian government, violating national immigration regulations and endangering countless Iranians, court filings argue.

The lawsuit depicts a coordinated campaign between the U.S. and Iranian governments to identify Iranians in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and pressure them to return to Iran — a marked departure from decades of diplomatic hostility between the two governments and an ongoing war.

Roughly 600 Iranians were put in immigration detention last year, according to public records obtained by the National Iranian American Council. In June, an Iranian woman was among the two dozen migrants the U.S. deported to the Central African Republic — in a marked departure from a decades-long practice by the U.S. of welcoming Iranian dissidents, exiles and others since the 1979 Islamic Revolution forced a large number of Iranians to flee.

The U.S. government is allowed to work with government officials of foreign countries to coordinate deportation logistics. However, federal regulations passed in the late 1990s prohibit the government from sharing information that could reveal that the individual getting deported applied for asylum.

“Congress made these confidentiality protections mandatory precisely because lives depend on them, and no agency and no administration, of either party, may set them aside,” said Ali Rahnama, the interim executive director of Iranian American Legal Defense Fund.

Starting in March 2025, the U.S. State Department arranged monthly meetings with Iranian officials, using the Pakistani embassy as an intermediary, in which U.S. officials shared detailed, sensitive information about detained Iranian immigrants who the U.S. government hoped to deport, lawyers for the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and the Public Citizen Litigation Group wrote in a complaint.

The information included details about asylum applications filed by people who say they were persecuted for converting to Christianity, for their sexuality or for participating in the Women, Life, Freedom protests against the Iranian government in 2022, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

ICE forced Iranian asylum applicants who had been detained in numerous facilities, mostly southern states, to meet with an Iranian government official who had extensive and specific knowledge about their applications, according to the complaint. The information was shared even after the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran started the Iran war in February 2026.

The lawsuit is seeking to halt sharing information about asylum seekers with the Iranian government and appoint an independent monitor to prevent future disclosures.

“Despite the U.S.’s ongoing war with Iran, the administration seems more committed to mass deportation than protecting human lives,” Michael Kirkpatrick, attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group said in a statement.

The complaint names the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin and the Department of State as some of the defendants. The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment on Tuesday morning.

The allegations come amid President Trump’s ambitious and aggressive immigration crackdown that involved over 600,000 deportations and causing roughly 1.9 million immigrants to voluntarily leave in 2025 alone, according to an announcement made by DHS.

Iranian officials acknowledged in September 2025 that as many as 400 Iranians could be returned under an agreement with the Trump’s administration. That month, the first of three deportation flights brought dozens of Iranians back to Iran. The second deportation flight was in December 2025, and the final recorded deportation flight departed at the end of January 2026, roughly a month before the war on Iran started, and just weeks after the Iranian government killed thousands of citizens as part of a brutal crackdown on protests. The New York Times reported at the time that some of those deported in the flights in September, December and January were asylum seekers.

Riddle writes for the Associated Press.