British Journalist And Nobel-Prize Winner Become Latest Examples That U.S. Visas Are Now A Loyalty Test
The land of free speech now restricts speeh at the level of Russia, Iran and others
By Dominick Skinner | 31 October 2025
In the United States of 2025, the visa stamp has become a loyalty test, a blunt instrument of political discipline for a regime built on cruelty. The government’s control over who may enter or remain has merged with its growing intolerance for criticism. Authors, journalists, scientists, and students have seen their rights to travel, study, or work revoked for simply having political opinions that the regime does not like, with Sami Hamdi and Wole Soyinka becoming the latest examples of this suppression of opinon.
Soyinka, a Nobel Prize-winning author had his U.S. visa revoked just days after comparing Donald Trump to a dictator, practically proving the Nigerian’s point. Sami Hamdi’s case had gained more media attention, with the revocation and kidnapping hitting headlines across most of the main outlets around the world, this time, it was his opposition to the war crimes of Israel that resulted in the harsh actions taken against him.
The pattern is no coincidence. The same nation that once exported its ideals of free expression is now policing them at the border, as well as within. Let’s have a look at some of the most high profile of these revocations.
I must note, this is not an exhaustive list, and collecting an exhaustive list may be entirely impossible at this stage, due to the high number of visa revocations, with over 6,000 student visas revoked alone.
Wole Soyinka
The Nigerian Nobel Prize-winning author confirmed on October 28, 2025, that his U.S. visa had been revoked. The U.S. Consulate in Lagos sent a letter dated October 23 citing only that “additional information became available.” Soyinka suggested the decision was political, coming just days after he compared Donald Trump to a dictator. “A bureaucratic way of blacklisting dissent,” he called it. For decades, the United States had celebrated him as a symbol of intellectual courage; now it has silenced him with paperwork.
Sami Hamdi
A British journalist and political commentator detained by ICE at San Francisco International Airport on October 26, 2025. The Department of Homeland Security revoked his visa on allegations of “support for terrorism” and posing a “national-security risk.” Civil-rights lawyers believe the real reason was his outspoken criticism of U.S. policy and Israel’s war in Gaza during a speaking tour. He was questioned for hours, denied counsel, and deported without formal charge.
Mario Guevara
A Salvadoran Emmy-winning journalist who livestreamed an immigration protest in Atlanta. ICE reopened an old deportation case that had long been closed, accusing him of “unlawful presence.” Advocates say it was retaliation for his reporting on ICE’s violent response to the protest. Guevara, who has covered immigration for decades, said simply: “They wanted me gone because I showed the video.”
Rümeysa Öztürk
A Turkish Fulbright PhD student whose State Department–issued visa was revoked under “national-security grounds” after she published a pro-Palestinian op-ed in her university paper. Officials later admitted that no evidence of terror links existed. She is now fighting the U.S. government in the court, having been released from detention, and mentions that she “trusts the U.S. justice system.”
Kseniia Petrova
A Russian biomedical researcher at Harvard who arrived at Boston Logan Airport on a J-1 visa. Customs officials accused her of a “customs violation” for transporting sealed research samples for review, standard practice in her field. The violation was used to revoke her visa on arrival. She is currently on pre-trial release and will still face the U.S. court system.
Aditya Wahyu Harsono
An Indonesian hospital supply-chain manager working under a business visa. His visa was suddenly back-dated as void due to a decade-old misdemeanor already resolved in court. Some say the real reason was his role in organizing medical relief shipments to Gaza. He was told by immigration officials that his “political activities” might “affect U.S. interests abroad.” He was released from ICE detention in May, after 2 months of unwarranted detention, and his ordeal may still be far from over.
Dr. Rasha Alawieh
A Lebanese kidney-transplant physician who was deported despite an active federal stay order. Border officials accused her of “sympathizing with Hezbollah” based on private photographs found on her phone, pictures from a 2018 family trip to Lebanon. Colleagues described her expulsion as “a Kafkaesque abuse of administrative power.” Her hospital in Michigan has since lost its lead transplant specialist, as Rasha has since been deported to Lebanon, despite her possession of a valid Visa.
Óscar Arias
The former president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. His U.S. visa was canceled in April after he criticised the Costa Rican government for bowing to the wishes of the Trump Regime. It was the first time in history that a former head of state and ally of Washington has been banned from the country for speech.
Mahmoud Khalil
A Palestinian graduate student at Columbia University who has become the lead example of Trump’s deranged deportation policies. Khalil has been on the other end of multiple false allegations, led by the ridiculous claim that he is a member or the TDA gang, the accusation famously portrayed by Trump when he claimed in an ABC interview that photoshopped lettering on Khalil’s hands were real tattoos. Students say Khalil’s true offense was helping organize campus demonstrations calling for a Gaza ceasefire. He remains in ICE custody.
Visa revocation in 2025 has evolved from a bureaucratic safeguard into a mechanism of political policing. Once reserved for fraud or security risks, it now targets dissent, journalists, academics, and students whose opinions offend the U.S. government. The excuses for these revocations, phrases like “national-security risk” or “harm to U.S. foreign policy”, are deliberately vague, allowing absolute discretion without accountability. These decisions exist beyond the reach of American courts, transforming border control into an instrument of censorship that serves the ruling regime.
The consequences reach far beyond the individuals affected. Every revoked visa signals to the world that political speech can cost one’s career, studies, or freedom to travel. The United States, once a symbol of intellectual openness and free expression, now exports fear, rather than freedom.
By weaponising paperwork, America erases dissent without spectacle, replacing persuasion with punishment. Each deportation or revocation is a quiet confession of fragility, proof that the state no longer trusts its own ideals to withstand criticism. In silencing others, the nation silences itself, retreating behind borders not to defend its democracy, but to wall off the truth.
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