Laura Loomer continues to prove she wields a scary amount of power inside the Trump administration. Tom Williams/CQ/ZUMA
Laura Loomer, the far-right provocateur and conspiracy theorist who has described herself as a “proud Islamophobe,” has proven to have particular sway with President Donald Trump.
The latest example came on Saturday, when the State Department halted all visitor visas to people from Gaza, including humanitarian medical visas for injured children. The announcement followed Loomer’s days-long posting spree, in which she baselessly alleged that Palestinian kids and their families arriving in the US for medical care were “a national security risk,” and that nonprofit organizations that facilitate their treatment in the US support Hamas. “They are not that sick if they can sit on a plane for 22 hours,” Loomer wrote.
Loomer posted videos of Palestinians arriving in the US this month via a group called Heal Palestine, a nonprofit organization founded last year that has brought injured children to the US for treatment. One of the videos, which Loomer claimed showed Palestinians arriving in Texas, shows a family arriving at the airport to cheers, with a teen boy on crutches who has one leg amputated below the knee. In another post, she claimed, without evidence, that Palestinian children who arrived in Texas—many of whom had lost limbs—and their families were “doing jihadi chants.” She posted that whoever approved the Palestinians’ visas at the State Department “should be fired,” and that Heal Palestine should be investigated.
The latest move comes as Israel’s aid blockade has caused widespread starvation in Gaza, with at least 100 children recently dying of hunger and malnutrition, according to Save the Children. Doctors have attested to evidence that the Israeli military may be deliberately targeting children in Gaza, with more than 40,000 reportedly killed or injured in the war, according to UNICEF. Earlier this year, UNICEF said the Gaza Strip had the highest number of child amputees per capita anywhere in the world.
A Reuters analysis of State Department data found that the US issued 3,800 visitor visas permitting medical treatment to people with travel documents from the Palestinian Authority so far this year. Heal Palestine told the New York Times that it has evacuated 63 injured kids for treatment to the US, including 11 who were flown to hospitals in nine American cities this month.
In a statement Sunday, Heal Palestine said it was “distressed” by the State Department’s decision, and that it is “a medical treatment program, not a refugee resettlement program.” The organization’s founder, Steve Sosebee, shared a photo with two child amputees, one of whom also lost his parents in a bombing, who Heal Palestine relocated to the US for medical treatment. “Where is our humanity in denying children like this access to medical care?” Sosebee wrote.
The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, another American nonprofit founded by Sosebee, called the State Department’s decision “dangerous and inhumane,” adding, “Blocking visa access for the wounded and sick children of Gaza is not merely a bureaucratic measure, it is a denial of their most basic right to access medical care.” Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Nihad Awad said the decision “is the latest sign that the intentional cruelty of President Trump’s ‘Israel First’ administration knows no bounds.”
In a post on X, Andrew Miller, a former Department of Justice (DOJ) official under the Biden administration who worked on Israeli-Palestinian affairs, dismissed the implication that the affected Palestinians present a security risk, noting that they all get vetted through American databases before entering the country. “Any security risk is negligible. This is rank ethnic/religious prejudice,” Miller wrote. “Denying sick people critical medical care is cowardly & depraved.”
Loomer, on the other hand, called the news “fantastic” in a post on X, adding, “Hopefully all GAZANS will be added to President Trump’s travel ban. There are doctors in other countries. The US is not the world’s hospital!”
On CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told host Margaret Brennan that the decision to halt the visas followed “outreach from multiple congressional offices,” adding that the State Department is “going to reevaluate how those visas are being granted, not just to the children, but how those visas are being granted to the people who are accompanying them.” In an X post on Friday, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) responded to Loomer’s posts, saying he was “deeply concerned about the incoming flights—including to Texas—allegedly filled with folks from Gaza,” adding that he was “inquiring.” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) also chimed in after Roy did, posting on X, “Oh, hell no!”
Rubio did not mention Loomer or those members of Congress by name, but claimed that “numerous congressional offices” have presented “evidence” that some of the organizations involved in bringing Palestinians to the US “have strong links to terrorist groups like Hamas.” But Loomer told the New York Times that she had spoken with Rubio on Friday night to flag the flights.
Spokespeople for the State Department did not immediately respond to questions from Mother Jones on Sunday, including about which congressional offices made these claims, what so-called evidence they provided, and what role Loomer played in the decision.
Loomer has consistently wielded a wild level of influence in the West Wing: In April, the president fired six members of his National Security Council after an Oval Office meeting in which she reportedly alleged they were disloyal to him; in May, Trump fired National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, with Loomer claiming credit in the aftermath.
To Loomer, though, the Trump administration could still go further in its latest move. “The GAZA visas don’t need to be temporarily halted,” she wrote in a post on X Sunday morning. “They need to be TERMINATED FOREVER.”
Update, Aug. 17: This post was updated with a comment from a former DOJ official.
