State Department Halts ‘Lifesaving’ Medical Visas For Palestinians From Gaza

The State Department said it would stop issuing visas to Palestinians from Gaza, including to those coming to the United States for humanitarian and medical treatment, following a campaign by far-right political activist Laura Loomer. “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 U.S. State Department said in a statement on Saturday. The decision will impact several programs that have evacuated dozens of critically injured children from Gaza over the last 21 months, including amputees and severe burn victims. The announcement came just hours after a series of social media posts from Loomer criticizing the medical evacuations of Palestinian children to the U.S. In one post, she shared a video of a child amputee arriving in a wheelchair at Seattle airport for medical treatment, adding: “The Trump administration needs to shut this abomination down ASAP.” Loomer, who once described herself as a “proud Islamaphobe” and said 9/11 was an “inside job,” made false claims in her posts and said she had sent her “evidence” to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Hours later, the pause was announced. Read more: I Can No Longer Feed Kids in Gaza Rubio told “Face the Nation” on CBS on Sunday that the action came after “outreach from multiple congressional offices asking questions about it.” But Loomer quickly took credit for the pause, posting: “It’s amazing how fast we can get results from the Trump administration.” The Palestinian Children Relief Fund (PCRF), a charity that organizes medical evacuations of children to the U.S., said the move will prevent them from providing “lifesaving medical treatment” for “critically ill children” from Gaza. “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 PCRF said in a statement. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Gaza’s health system has been in collapse, and there has been a “relentless and systematic decimation of hospitals in Gaza.” The United Nations children’s charity, UNICEF, said in July that more than 17,000 children have been killed and 33,000 injured in Gaza in the last 21 months.   HEAL Palestine, another charity that organizes evacuations and which was specifically targeted by Loomer in her posts, said this month it has evacuated 63 injured children and 148 total evacuees to the U.S. to receive treatment. Earlier this month, it carried out the largest known evacuation of wounded children from Gaza to the U.S., which included 11 children and their families, most of them for treatment of amputations. HEAL Palestine made it clear on social media that the visas it uses to bring people to the U.S. for treatment were not for resettlement, but for lifesaving care, contrary to Loomer’s claims. “After their treatment is complete, the children and any accompanying family members return to the Middle East. This is a medical treatment program, not a refugee resettlement program,” HEAL Palestine said Saturday. The charity added that U.S. tax dollars do not fund the treatment provided to these children.  Loomer, a conspiracy theorist with a history of using hate speech to gain attention, has acquired an outsized influence over the White House in President Donald Trump’s second term.  She has successfully lobbied to remove people from top government roles whom she considers disloyal to the president, including six from the National Security Council, a senior Customs and Border Protection official, and a Food and Drug Administration vaccine official. TIME has contacted the State Department for comment.