WASHINGTON — When the United States revokes someone’s visa, it is typically confidential, with few exceptions. But with British punk-rap duo Bob Vylan and others, the Trump administration appears to have eased privacy restrictions to make a public point when it deems a case particularly egregious.
The State Department’s number two diplomat made headlines when he posted a social media message this week saying visas for the band for an upcoming U.S. tour had been revoked. British police are investigating whether a crime was committed when the duo’s frontman led the audience in chants of “Death to the IDF” — the Israel Defense Forces — at a music festival in the U.K.
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau posted that their visas had been revoked “in light of their hateful tirade at Glastonbury, including leading the crowd in death chants.”
The band rejected claims of antisemitism and said in a statement that it was being “targeted for speaking up” about the war in Gaza.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act and certain statutes related to the privacy of government documents, the State Department has for years resisted or refused to discuss specific cases in which visas may have been denied or revoked. Certain exemptions apply, such as when foreign officials and their immediate family members are found to ineligible for entry into the United States for violating anti-corruption or human rights regulations.
However, as the Trump administration pursues a nationwide crackdown targeted at visa holders it believes have engaged in antisemitic or pro-militant behavior, the standard for releasing once-privileged information seems to have been relaxed.
“Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said when asked about the public announcement.
She said one reason for announcing the revocations was to make clear that the administration is serious about the standards it will apply to visa holders and applicants.
“We’ve been public about that standard, and this was a very public event that violated that very basic standard about the nature of who we want to let into the country,” Bruce said.
Other recent cases have been less clear-cut, although some have ended up in public court cases.
Earlier this year, as part of an initiative to expel foreign students who are accused by the Trump administration of engaging in pro-Hamas, anti-Israel or antisemitic activity, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he had rescinded at least 300 visas and expected that number to rise.
Many of those cases were not publicized individually.
One that was: Rumeysa Ozturk, who was detained by immigration authorities in Massachusetts for authoring an opinion piece criticizing Tufts University for not taking a tougher line on alleged Israeli atrocities in Gaza.
U.S. officials said at the time that her visa had been revoked because of adverse foreign policy consequences if she remained in the United States.
Other high-profile and public cases of visa revocations for political reasons date back decades, including actor Charlie Chaplin in 1952 during the Truman administration and an ultimately unsuccessful deportation attempt against Beatles singer John Lennon in the 1970s.
“The practice of ideological exclusion has a long history in the United States, having been used for decades as a political tool to keep U.S. audiences from being exposed to dissident viewpoints,” the human rights group Amnesty International said in a 2020 report.
“During the Cold War, in particular, the U.S. government denied visas to some of the world’s leading intellectuals, writers and artists who, the government thought, might promote Communism or other ‘subversive’ views,” it said.
