US revokes over 300 foreign student visas

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US has revoked at least 300 foreign students' visas as part of President Donald Trump's effort to clamp down on pro-Palestinian protesters on university campuses.

"Maybe more than 300 at this point," he said while speaking to reporters on a visit to Guyana. "We do it every day, every time I find one of these lunatics."

Rubio was asked to confirm how many student visas the administration had revoked in its crackdown on rhetoric at universities that it considers anti-Israeli.

The remarks follow immigration officials detention of a doctoral Turkish student attending Tufts University - an arrest the secretary defended.

A video of the student, Rumeysa Ozturk, being taken away by masked, plain-clothes officers to an unmarked car outside Boston, Massachusetts, has gone viral and sparked protests online.

Ms Ozturk is a Fullbright Scholar on an F-1 student visa and is in a doctoral program for Child Study and Human Development at Tufts.

Rubio was asked on Thursday why the Turkish student's visa was revoked.

"Here's why: I've said it everywhere, and I'll say it again," Rubio said. "If you apply for a student visa to come to the United States and you say you're coming not just to study, but to participate in movements that vandalize universities, harass students, take over buildings, and cause chaos, we're not giving you that visa."

It is currently unclear whether Ms Ozturk has been charged with anything.

Rubio did not provide any of the specific allegations against the 30-year-old, who has participated in pro-Palestinian protests. The Tufts student also co-wrote an opinion piece in the student newspaper last year that called for her university to divest from companies with ties to Israel and acknowledge "Palestinian genocide".

"Based on patterns we are seeing across the country, her exercising her free speech rights appears to have played a role in her detention," Mahsa Khanbabai, Ms Ozturk's lawyer, told Reuters.