The United States says it will suspend immigrant visa processing for 75 countries around the world, as US President Donald Trump’s administration continues its wide-reaching crackdown on immigration.

The Department of State said on Wednesday that visa processing would be paused for countries “whose migrants take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates”.

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“The freeze will remain active until the US can ensure that new immigrants will not extract wealth from the American people,” it said, adding that the measure would affect “dozens of countries”, including Somalia, Haiti, Iran and Eritrea.

Trump has pursued a hardline, anti-immigration agenda since he returned to office in January 2025, promising to carry out the largest deportation operation in US history.

Over the past year, he has announced curbs to several US visa programmes and drastically slashed the number of planned refugee admissions into the US.

His administration has also deployed heavily armed immigration officers to major US cities to detain and deport people accused of being in the country illegally.

The State Department said earlier this week that it has revoked more than 100,000 visas since Trump’s return to the White House, a one-year record.

The Department of Homeland Security last month said the Trump administration has deported more than 605,000 people, while 2.5 million others left the US on their own.

The State Department did not immediately release a full list of the countries that will be subjected to the freeze on immigrant visas on Wednesday.

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The AFP news agency, citing an unnamed US official, said Brazil, Egypt, Thailand, Nigeria, Iraq and Yemen would be among those affected.

Meanwhile, a State Department spokesman said the freeze on immigrant visa processing would begin on January 21.

The move will not apply to applicants seeking non-immigrant, or temporary tourist or business, visas.

David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, said the Trump administration “has proven itself to have the most anti-legal immigration agenda in American history”.

“This action will ban nearly half of all legal immigrants to the United States, turning away about 315,000 legal immigrants over the next year alone,” Bier said in a statement.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said Wednesday’s announcement, when combined with previously announced US travel bans, means the Trump administration “has now banned or suspended immigrant visas for 90 different countries”.

Seventy percent of the targeted countries were in Africa, Reichlin-Melnick added.