A Palestinian girl searches for things to rescue at a garbage waste dump in Gaza City on August 18, 2025. (Photo by Omar Al-Qattaa / AFP)
The Trump administration announced Saturday that it was halting visitor visas for people from Gaza, including those used for children to receive urgent medical treatment in the United States.
The State Department said in a statement posted on X that it was stopping all visitor visas while it conducts "a full and thorough review of the process and procedures” used to approve "a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas in recent days.”
The department did not immediately respond to questions on how long its review is expected to take or how many visitor visas it has issued recently.
The move comes after far-right activist Laura Loomer criticized the visa program in recent days, describing it as a "national security threat” in a social media post.
On Friday, Loomer shared a video posted by nonprofit aid organization HEAL Palestine of a cheering crowd welcoming children from Gaza with flowers and balloons at an airport in San Francisco, in a post demanding the firing of the State Department officials who approved the visas.
Earlier this month, HEAL Palestine said that it had reached a "historic milestone” after launching "the largest single medical evacuation of injured children from Gaza to the U.S.” - some of whom had lost limbs or suffered severe burns. The nonprofit said it had evacuated a total of 148 people to date, including 63 children.
"These children could not wait,” Zeena Salman, a pediatric oncologist and co-founder of HEAL Palestine, said in the Aug. 4 statement, adding that "their lives are at stake.”
HEAL Palestine didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
According to the latest publicly available figures, the State Department issued 640 visas to people with Palestinian Authority travel documents in May allowing them to enter the United States temporarily, including for medical treatment.
Palestinian rights groups denounced the department’s decision to remove a pathway for people from Gaza seeking medical care in the U.S.
"Medical evacuations are a lifeline for the children of Gaza who would otherwise face unimaginable suffering or death due to the collapse of medical infrastructure in Gaza,” the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund said in a statement urging the U.S. government to "reverse this dangerous and inhumane decision.”
Last month, the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, released the names and ages of 60,000 Gazans confirmed killed during the war between Israel and Hamas - 18,500 of whom were children.
