The Department of State is imposing a very tough anti-immigration line. In recent weeks, many legal immigrants, especially young college students, have had their visas revoked to enter and live temporarily in the United States. However, on Saturday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on his X account that all South Sudanese passport holders will be stripped of their visas and prevented “entry into the United States, effective immediately.” Rubio says the measure is a consequence of the South Sudan transitional government’s failure to take back its citizens “in a timely manner” as the U.S. will not renew their Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which expires on May 3. Washington “will be prepared to review these actions when South Sudan is in full cooperation,” the official statement reads.
Temporary Protective Status is a visa designed and approved by the Biden Administration for all foreign citizens who cannot safely return to their country due to war, natural disaster, or other “extraordinary conditions.” In this case, South Sudan has experienced instability for years, as millions of people go hungry while political leaders continue to clash without coming to consensus on critical issues. The United Nations has repeatedly called the world’s attention to the possible outbreak of civil war, which would worsen this humanitarian crisis. According to Department of Homeland Security data dating back to September 2023, the U.S. is accepting about 133 South Sudanese with TPS and another 140 are eligible to apply, out of about 1.2 million people residing in the U.S. thanks to this program.
The South Sudanese are not the only ones affected by this harsh anti-immigration policy. In January, the Trump Administration revoked TPS for about 600,000 Venezuelans. However, South Sudan is the first country to generally have all entry visas banned. There have been other cases where visas have been revoked or denied, but they have always affected individual citizens and for specific reasons.
In recent weeks, several universities have reported that some international students have had their study visas revoked by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Among them are Minnesota State University at Mankato, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Arizona State, Cornell University, North Carolina State University, University of Oregon, University of Texas at Austin, University of Colorado, the University of Alabama, Ohio State University, and Tufts in Boston, where video of a PhD student arrested on the street by ICE agents made global headlines.
If university officials had not conducted internal reviews, they would never have discovered that some students’ visas had been revoked, as the Department of State did not send any notices.
The reasons for the revocations were often traced back to participation in the pro-Palestinian protests that swept through thousands of campuses across the United States in May 2024. Secretary of State Rubio, who spoke of “over 300 visas already revoked,” had been very clear: “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses. And if we’ve given you a visa and you decide to do that, we’re going to take it away.”
