{"id":4883,"date":"2025-08-17T12:30:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T12:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/4883\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T12:30:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T12:30:10","slug":"us-stops-issuing-visas-for-sick-gazan-children-after-campaign-led-by-proud-islamaphobe-laura-loomer-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/4883\/","title":{"rendered":"US stops issuing visas for sick Gazan children after campaign led by \u2018proud Islamaphobe\u2019 Laura Loomer \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US<\/a> state department said it would stop issuing visas to children from Gaza<\/a> in desperate need of medical care after an online pressure campaign led by Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer and \u201cproud Islamophobe\u201d close to Donald Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll 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,\u201d the state department said in a message posted on X, which Ms Loomer was banned from before it was purchased by Elon Musk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a pair of posts on the social network on Friday, she had shared video of badly injured Palestinian<\/a> children and their family members arriving in Houston and San Francisco this month, along with false claims their shouts of joy were \u201cjihadi chants\u201d and that they were \u201cdoing the Hamas<\/a> terror whistle\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ms Loomer falsely claimed she had \u201cexclusively obtained\u201d the two video clips she shared. One was copied from a medical aid charity\u2019s public Instagram account and the other from the Houston Chronicle\u2019s YouTube channel.<\/p>\n

After misrepresenting the children, including amputees arriving to get prosthetic legs, as \u201cIslamic invaders from an Islamic terror hot zone\u201d, she demanded to know \u201cwho at the US state department under @marcorubio signed off on the visas for Palestinians from a Hamas hot zone\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy would anyone at the state department give visas to individuals who live in Gaza, which is run by Hamas?\u201d Ms Loomer wrote, before falsely stating that \u201c95 per cent of Gazans voted for Hamas\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hamas got 44 per cent of party list votes in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections across Gaza and the West Bank, and lost three of the five districts in Gaza to the secular Fatah party. There has been no election since.<\/p>\n

After the visa programme was halted, Ms Loomer declared victory. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is fantastic news,\u201d she wrote in response to the state department announcement. \u201cHopefully all Gazans will be added to President Trump\u2019s travel ban. There are doctors in other countries. The US is not the world\u2019s hospital!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LauraLaura Loomer on Independence Avenue in Washington, DC, earlier this summer. Photograph: Greg Kahn\/New York Times <\/p>\n

Republican congressman Randy Fine explicitly commended Ms Loomer after the change was announced, in a sign of her sway over some US policy. <\/p>\n

\u201cMassive credit needs to be given to @LauraLoomer for uncovering this and making me and other officials aware. Well done, Laura,\u201d Mr Fine wrote on X.<\/p>\n

The Palestine Children\u2019s Relief Fund, a US-based charity, called on the Trump administration to \u201creverse this dangerous and inhumane decision\u201d.<\/p>\n

Over the last 30 years the charity has evacuated thousands of Palestinian children to the US for medical care, it said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cMedical 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Council on Islamic-American Relations said the block on visas was \u201cthe latest sign that the intentional cruelty of President Trump\u2019s \u2018Israel First\u2019 administration knows no bounds\u201d. <\/p>\n

It said it was \u201cdeeply ironic\u201d that the Trump administration was meanwhile \u201crolling out the red carpet for racists and indicted war criminals from the Israeli government\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/world\/us\/2025\/08\/16\/trumps-red-carpet-to-bring-putin-out-of-international-purgatory-made-for-a-nauseating-charade\/<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Paul Graham, co-founder of the Silicon Valley start-up incubator Y Combinator, wrote on X: \u201cIf Laura Loomer had been around in 1940, she\u2019d have been trying to prevent Jewish refugees from entering the US. You know she would. And if Trump had been president then, she\u2019d have succeeded.\u201d \u2013 Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US state department said it would stop issuing visas to children from Gaza in desperate need of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,5193,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-4883","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-laura-loomer","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}