Secretary of State Marco Rubio weighed in Thursday on a Turkish visa student who was arrested by federal immigration authorities this week, which went viral after it was captured by a nearby surveillance camera.
Rubio made the remarks during a joint press conference in Georgetown, Guyana, with Guyanese President Irfaan Ali.
“We revoked her visa. It’s an F1 visa,” he said. “We revoked it, and here’s why – and I’ll say it again; I’ve said it everywhere. Let me be abundantly clear. If you go apply for a visa right now anywhere in the world – let me just send this message out – if you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student and you tell us that the reason why you’re coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds, but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus, we’re not going to give you a visa.”
“If you lie to us and get a visa and then enter the United States and with that visa, participate in that sort of activity, we’re going to take away your visa,” he continued. “Now, once you’ve lost your visa, you’re no longer legally in the United States, and we have a right, like every country in the world has a right, to remove you from our country. So it’s just that simple.”
Rubio said that it was “crazy” and “stupid” for any country to let people come in as visitors and cause disturbances at their universities.
“And if we’ve given you a visa and then you decide to do that, we’re going to take it away,” he said. “I encourage every country to do that, by the way, because I think it’s crazy to invite students into your country that are coming onto your campus and destabilizing it. We’re just not going to have it. So we’ll revoke your visa; and once your visa is revoked, you’re illegally in the country and you have to leave. Every country in the world has a right to decide who comes in as a visitor and who doesn’t.”
“If you invite me into your home because you say, ‘I want to come to your house for dinner,’ and I go to your house and I start putting mud on your couch and spray-painting your kitchen, I bet you you’re going to kick me out,” he concluded. “Well, we’re going to do the same thing if you come into the United States as a visitor and create a ruckus for us. We don’t want it. We don’t want it in our country. Go back and do it in your country, but you’re not going to do it in our country.”
WATCH:
.@SecRubio on detained Turkish student: "We revoked her visa…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. If we've given you a visa and then you decide to do that we're going to take it away. pic.twitter.com/s6yKQ2WqwY
— CSPAN (@cspan) March 27, 2025
