On Saturday, August 16, 2025, the U.S. State Department announced it would halt the issuing of visas to children from Gaza in urgent need of medical care—a move that has sparked outrage and debate across the political spectrum. This abrupt policy shift followed a high-profile online campaign led by Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer and close ally of former President Donald Trump, whose influence within the current administration has grown considerably despite her lack of an official government position.
The controversy began earlier in August when several badly injured Palestinian children, accompanied by their families, arrived in Houston and San Francisco. Their arrival had been arranged by HEAL Palestine, a U.S. nonprofit that has provided at least 63 children with lifesaving surgeries, prosthetics, and rehabilitative care not available in Gaza. According to Al Jazeera and Drop Site News, these children were granted temporary medical-humanitarian visas, with the understanding that they and their families would return to the Middle East after receiving treatment.
But the humanitarian gesture quickly became a political flashpoint. Loomer, who describes herself as a “Proud Islamophobe” and “pro-white nationalist,” took to X (formerly Twitter) to denounce the children’s arrival. She shared videos posted by HEAL Palestine, falsely claiming the children’s shouts of joy were “jihadi chants” and accusing them of being “Islamic invaders from an Islamic terror hot zone.” Loomer’s posts, which tagged Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the State Department, demanded to know how the children had been granted visas and called for an immediate halt to such entries.
“How did Palestinians get Visas under the Trump administration to get into the United States? Did @StateDept approve this? How did they get out of Gaza? Is @SecRubio aware of this?” she wrote, fueling a wave of online outrage among her 1.7 million followers—including several top U.S. officials, as noted by the New York Times.
The following day, the State Department announced, “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 language was cold and bureaucratic—“paperwork talk in the face of people fleeing bombardment, displacement, and starvation,” as one commentator put it for the New Indian Express.
HEAL Palestine responded with distress, clarifying that the children were in the U.S. only for essential medical treatment. “After their treatment is complete, the children and any accompanying family members return to the Middle East,” the organization stated. They also pushed back against Loomer’s claims that the children would become a burden on U.S. taxpayers, emphasizing that all costs were covered by private donors, not public funds. “Your taxes aren’t funding the care for these Palestinian children,” Drop Site News reiterated. “The only role of US tax dollars in the picture is the costly review the State Department will now be forced to conduct because of a deranged racist’s ravings to block children from lifesaving treatment.”
Loomer, however, celebrated the visa suspension as a personal victory, thanking Rubio and calling it “fantastic news.” She went further, suggesting that “all GAZANS will be added to President Trump’s travel ban,” and declared, “There are doctors in other countries. The US is not the world’s hospital!” Loomer’s influence on policy was underscored by her own boasts on X and by public commendations from Republican lawmakers such as Rep. Randy Fine, who wrote, “Massive credit needs to be given to @LauraLoomer for uncovering this and making me and other officials aware. Well done, Laura.”
The episode is only the latest in a string of controversies tied to Loomer, who has built a career on conspiracy theories and inflammatory rhetoric. Her resume, as detailed by the New Indian Express, includes claims that school shootings were staged, mail bomb attempts were false flags, and that the Buffalo mass shooting was a Democratic hoax. Despite losing two congressional races in Florida, Loomer’s star has risen within Trump’s orbit, with the former president praising her as a “very good patriot.” She has reportedly influenced the hiring and firing of senior officials in the Trump administration, often targeting those she deems insufficiently loyal.
Outside the MAGA echo chamber, the State Department’s visa halt has been condemned as “dangerous and inhumane” by organizations such as the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. “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 group stressed. The Council on Islamic-American Relations echoed this sentiment, calling the move “intentional cruelty wrapped in President Trump’s ‘Israel First’ agenda.” They added that it was “deeply ironic” for the administration to ban sick children while “rolling out the red carpet for racists and indicted war criminals from the Israeli government.”
The situation in Gaza is dire. According to UNICEF, since October 2023, at least 17,000 children have been killed and 33,000 injured, with 10 children losing one or both legs every day. Hospitals are collapsing, and as of August 2025, 52% of essential medicines and 68% of consumables are at zero stock. Only 12 of the 19 remaining hospitals provide a full range of services; the rest are limited to basic emergency care. The numbers are staggering, but the individual stories—children denied the chance for prosthetics, families desperate for hope—paint an even grimmer reality.
Loomer’s campaign was also marked by misinformation. She claimed, for example, that “95 percent of Gazans voted for Hamas”—a figure easily debunked. In fact, Hamas won 44 percent of the party list vote in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, and there has been no election since. Yet, such inaccuracies did little to slow the momentum of her online campaign or the willingness of some lawmakers to echo her demands.
For critics, the episode is part of a broader pattern of exclusionary policies under Trump. The 2017 executive order barring people from several Muslim-majority countries, often referred to as the “Muslim ban,” was widely condemned as discriminatory and inhumane. The current administration has resurrected and expanded these policies, barring entry to people from a dozen countries—primarily African and Middle Eastern—under the banner of “security.” But for many, these measures are little more than a license to discriminate, with devastating consequences for the most vulnerable.
Journalist Ryan Grim, co-founder of Drop Site, summed up the outrage: “Trump slashed Medicaid, slashed the [Department of Veterans Affairs], slashed [Affordable Care Act] exchange subsidies, and increased the military budget to over a trillion dollars but Loomer wants people to think that the reason they don’t have healthcare is that a Palestinian child got treated thanks to donations from people heartbroken at what Israel is doing to children. The trillion dollars being spent to blow the arms and legs off of children is the problem. Not the children themselves.”
As Gaza’s last lifelines collapse, the debate over America’s moral responsibilities—and the influence of voices like Laura Loomer—has never felt more urgent. The fate of children seeking medical care hangs in the balance, and the world is watching to see which values will prevail.
