MAGA influencer Laura Loomer objected to the federal government providing visitor visas for Gazans seeking medical care in the United States, including several young injured and ill children, many of whom had lost limbs during the conflict in Gaza.
The medical evacuations have been orchestrated by the American nonprofit organization HEAL Palestine, which reports that the Gazans who were granted visitor visas are expected to travel to Egypt once their medical care in the U.S. is completed.
Loomer claimed on social media, without providing evidence, that the granting of visitor visas to Gazans poses a “national security threat.”
The unofficial advisor to President Donald Trump, who has a history of making anti-Islam comments, said she spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the flights and what she called the threat of an Islamic invasion. She told her 1.7 million followers on X, “Clearly this is not what we voted for.”
The State Department reacted to Loomer’s charges and 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.”
Note: Loomer, who has called for the deportation of “Every Gazan who was welcomed into the US,” also called for the State Department to release the names of the agency employees who approved the visas, and demanded, “they need to be fired.”
Since making her demands, Loomer reports that she has received death threats and wrote: “I do not care how many enemies I make.”
BREAKING Following the release of my reports yesterday exposing flights of GAZANS arriving at airports all across the US, the US State Department just announced that “All visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped” while the US @StateDept “conducts a full… https://t.co/mI5APTairz
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) August 16, 2025
Andrew Miller, former deputy assistant secretary for Israeli-Palestinian affairs at the State Department during the Biden administration, reported that Gazans who receive visitor visas to the U.S. undergo security checks at embassies in Jerusalem, Cairo, or Amman.
Miller told The New York Times: “What’s more, just to get to a U.S. embassy outside of Gaza, the Israeli military and security services had to clear them and anyone accompanying them.” He added: “From what I saw, any insinuation that we were taking an unusual security risk in these cases is baseless.”
Note: Miller, a skeptic of the Biden administration’s “bear hug” approach to the government of Israel, surprised his colleagues when he resigned from the State Department in June 2024.
Prior to working at the State Department, Miller was a senior policy adviser to the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (Linda Thomas-Greenfield), and during the Obama administration, he served as director for Egypt and Israel military issues on the White House National Security Council.
Dr. Mohammad Subeh, an ER physician who volunteers for HEAL Palestine, also spoke with the Times. He said: “I am saddened to see fear and hate permeate within a small yet vocal segment of our society, whereby people have dehumanized children.”