Deport them completely: The United States will review visas for millions of foreigners

The US State Department plans to check the visas of more than 55 million foreigners in order to identify violators of immigration rules and, if necessary, cancel their documents or initiate deportation. The strengthening of migration policy initiated under President Donald Trump has already led to a reduction in the number of migrants in the country: for the first time in several decades, the number of those who left exceeded the number of those who arrived. About the measures taken by the American authorities against foreigners — in the Izvestia article.

How many people do the US authorities want to check

The US State Department plans to check the visas of more than 55 million foreigners to identify those whose documents may be canceled or who risk deportation for violating immigration rules. This is reported by the Associated Press.

"All visa holders in the United States are under constant monitoring in order to detect signs indicating a violation of the conditions for obtaining them," the State Department noted.

Possible violations include visa overstaying, criminal activity, security threats, participation in terrorism or support for terrorist groups. If such facts are revealed, the visa will be canceled, and if the person is in the United States, he may face deportation.

The actions of the US authorities have led to a reduction in the number of migrants in the country.

For the first time in several decades, the number of migrants who left the United States exceeded the number of arrivals. This is stated in the report of the Pew Research Center. The last time such a reduction in the migration flow was observed was in the 1960s.

By the end of 2024, a record number of migrants were living in the United States — 53.3 million with a total population of 347 million people. That is, every seventh resident of the country was a visitor. However, in the first six months of 2025, the number of migrants decreased by almost 1.5 million people amid tightening policies. Some of them left the country voluntarily, and some were deported. And as of June 2025, 51.9 million immigrants live in the United States, accounting for 15.4% of the country's population. They are extremely unevenly distributed throughout the country: the largest number of newcomers inhabit southern California, Nevada and Texas.

In turn, American journalists from The New York Times emphasize that such a significant net outflow of foreigners was previously recorded only during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when, according to various estimates, from 400,000 to one million Mexicans and Americans of Mexican descent left the country, largely due to the repatriation program.

Trump tightened migration policy after coming to power

On the day of his inauguration on January 20, Donald Trump, in his first speech as the 47th president of the United States, promised to immediately stop illegal immigration into the country. And throughout the year, the situation with migrants in the United States began to change gradually.

The head of state signed a decree "Protecting our Borders," which provides for the resumption of construction of the border wall between Mexico and the United States, as well as the restoration of the "Stay in Mexico" policy. This program, introduced in 2019, requires migrants seeking asylum to wait for their cases to be processed in Mexico if they crossed the US-Mexico border illegally.

In addition, Donald Trump signed a decree recognizing Mexican cartels and other criminal organizations as foreign terrorist groups, which expands the powers of US law enforcement agencies in the fight against these groups.

In addition, Trump resumed the construction of a wall on the Mexican border, which was suspended by former US President Joe Biden. During the Biden administration, more than 8 million migrants entered the United States, about 60% of them without legal permission.

And after the adoption of all the necessary decrees, the responsible authorities began work on reviewing the visas of foreigners from a number of countries. Thus, the US Federal Appeals Court supported the administration of Donald Trump and suspended the lower court's decision, which preserved the temporary protected status (TPS) for 60,000 migrants from Central America and Nepal, The Guardian reports.

Now the authorities can begin deporting about 7,000 Nepalis whose status expired on August 5. Also, 51,000 Hondurans and 3,000 Nicaraguans are at risk of losing their legal status after September 8 and becoming candidates for expulsion. According to media reports, the Trump administration has already canceled TPS for about 350,000 Venezuelans, 500,000 Haitians, more than 160,000 Ukrainians, as well as citizens of Afghanistan and Cameroon.