State Department says it has revoked visas from people who allegedly ‘celebrated’ Charlie Kirk’s murder

By Jennifer Hansler, Kylie Atwood, CNN

(CNN) — The US State Department said it has revoked visas from at least six individuals who allegedly “celebrated” Charlie Kirk’s murder.

In a post on X Tuesday – which would have been Kirk’s birthday – the agency cataloged “just a few examples” of people who had their visas revoked for comments about the conservative figure following his death. The State Department also said it “continues to identify visa holders who celebrated the heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk.”

The Department’s moves to revoke and deny visas to people for their comments about Kirk have raised questions about their legality under the First Amendment.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last month that the agency had “most certainly been denying visas” to people “celebrating” Kirk’s murder.

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said he had instructed consular officials to monitor the comments on social media claiming to identify individuals “praising, rationalizing, or making light of” Kirk’s death.

It is unclear how many people have been assigned to do the social media vetting or if the revocations cited Tuesday represent all of those who have had their visas revoked.

CNN has asked the State Department for further details about the revocations.

Among the examples cited Tuesday are a post said to be from an Argentine national who said that Kirk “‘devoted his entire life spreading racist, xenophobic, misogynistic rhetoric’ and deserves to burn in hell”; another said to be from a South African national who “mocked Americans grieving the loss of Kirk, saying ‘they’re hurt that the racist rally ended in attempted martyrdom’ and alleging ‘he was used to astroturf a movement of white nationalist trailer trash’”; and a Paraguayan national who allegedly said, “Charlie Kirk was a son of a b**** and he died by his own rules.”

The State Department said it also revoked visas from a Mexican national, a Brazilian national and a German national.

“(President Donald Trump) and (Secretary of State Marco Rubio) will defend our borders, our culture, and our citizens by enforcing our immigration laws,” the Department said Tuesday. “Aliens who take advantage of America’s hospitality while celebrating the assassination of our citizens will be removed.”

Conor Fitzpatrick, an attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), said in a statement Tuesday, “The Trump administration must stop punishing people for their opinions alone.”

“The Supreme Court has been clear that noncitizens have a right to freedom of speech,” he said. FIRE is suing the Trump administration for its visa revocation policies targeting students who have spoken out against the war in Gaza.

Harold Hongju Koh, who served as the State Department’s legal adviser during the Obama administration, said last month that revoking visas based on statements about Kirk’s death is “a First Amendment violation.”

“It shouldn’t matter whether you agree with what they say or not, but the idea that they lose their visa over this is essentially violating the first premise of US Supreme Court First Amendment law,” Koh told CNN.

He also noted that the standards for revoking the visas is “incredibly vague.” Koh questioned what the metrics are and who would make the decisions of when they were applied.

“It’s a punitive exercise of the president’s diplomatic powers, and what are the limits to this? What if they decide next that criticizing the president is the basis for engaging in visa denials?” said Koh, who is now a professor of international law at Yale.

“I don’t know any lawyer who was in L (Office of the Legal Adviser) in my time who would have signed off on this,” he told CNN.

Scott Anderson, a former attorney-adviser at the State Department, said that there could be some distinction between revoking the visas and denying them.

Foreign citizens, once they’re “lawfully situated” in the US “usually have a fair amount of First Amendment rights,” he explained last month.

“It gets trickier when you’re talking about people overseas coming to the United States or here on more discretionary visas, and exactly where the limits are on that,” said Anderson, who is now at the Brookings Institution. “People overseas don’t have any entitlement to come to the United States. There’s certainly no constitutional rights.”

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