The State Department announced this weekend that it is suspending visitor visas for Palestinians from Gaza to enter the U.S. after right wingers raged about children entering the country to receive medical care — often for injuries caused by Israel with the U.S.’s backing.
“All visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to issue a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas in recent days,” the State Department said in a statement on X.
The announcement came after right wing influencer Laura Loomer complained about the program, specifically highlighting work by the nonprofit organization HEAL Palestine. She asserted on X that the U.S. should not be accepting any refugees from Palestine — even though HEAL Palestine only arranges temporary visas for children to receive medical care.
Loomer posted a video showing young children being cheered by people waving Palestinian flags as they arrive at San Francisco’s airport with their families. Loomer said that the video was “exclusive” and that she “obtained video footage” for her report, though the video was originally posted online on HEAL Palestine’s Instagram account, and received over half a million likes.
Still, Loomer claimed that the video was evidence of the Trump administration going back on its pledge to not accept Palestinian refugees. This is a lie that nonetheless took hold on the right.
HEAL Palestine condemned the State Department’s decision in a statement, and emphasized that it is not bringing children over as part of a refugee resettlement program.
“HEAL Palestine is an American humanitarian nonprofit organization delivering urgent aid and medical care to children in Palestine, including sponsoring and bringing severely injured children to the U.S. on temporary visas for essential medical treatment not available at home. After their treatment is complete, the children and any accompanying family members return to the Middle East,” the group said.
Indeed, medical evacuation is the last hope for an estimated 11,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including 4,500 children, who require it, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has estimated. With Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza’s health system — and decades of medical blockades by Israeli occupation — thousands in Gaza have no treatment options within the Strip for diseases like cancer or treatment for severe injuries caused by Israeli bombings.
HEAL Palestine has brought 63 injured children, aged 6 to 15 years old, from Gaza to the U.S. for treatment, with 148 evacuees total, according to the group. These are children who have lost limbs or suffered severe burns, likely as a result of Israeli attacks, while others have chronic conditions. “All are severely malnourished,” the group said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the visa suspensions in an interview with CBS on Sunday, accusing the groups helping Palestinians acquire visas of being affiliated with Hamas, without evidence.
“First of all, it’s not just kids. It’s a bunch of adults that are accompanying them,” he said, likely referring to the children’s family members.
Advocates for Palestinian rights have said that the State Department’s decision is cruel.
“Blocking Palestinian children injured by American weapons from coming to America for medical treatment is the latest sign that the intentional cruelty of President Trump’s ‘Israel First’ administration knows no bounds,” said Nihad Awad, the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ national executive director.
“It is also deeply ironic that the Trump administration would ban Palestinian children seeking treatment while rolling out the red carpet for racists and indicted war criminals from the Israeli government,” Awad went on.
Humanitarian groups have pleaded with international partners to welcome Palestinians for treatment as Israel has denied the vast majority of requests for medical evacuations, no matter how dire the cases. Most countries are refusing to allow Palestinians to evacuate, MSF says, while Israel has imposed a number of arbitrary restrictions on approving evacuations.
“We are looking for countries — we really want them to open their doors to accept more and more cases because those patients are dying inside Gaza,” said Hani Isleem, the group’s project coordinator for medical evacuations in Gaza.
France was one of those countries, but earlier this month also froze its program to allow Palestinians to flee Gaza amid the genocide after a Palestinian student was suspended from her university due to allegations that she made antisemitic posts online.
Our most important fundraising appeal of the year
December is the most critical time of year for Truthout, because our nonprofit news is funded almost entirely by individual donations from readers like you. So before you navigate away, we ask that you take just a second to support Truthout with a tax-deductible donation.
This year is a little different. We are up against a far-reaching, wide-scale attack on press freedom coming from the Trump administration. 2025 was a year of frightening censorship, news industry corporate consolidation, and worsening financial conditions for progressive nonprofits across the board.
We can only resist Trump’s agenda by cultivating a strong base of support. The right-wing mediasphere is funded comfortably by billionaire owners and venture capitalist philanthropists. At Truthout, we have you.
We’ve set an ambitious target for our year-end campaign — a goal of $230,000 to keep up our fight against authoritarianism in 2026. Please take a meaningful action in this fight: make a one-time or monthly donation to Truthout before December 31. If you have the means, please dig deep.