The move blocked a pathway for those seeking medical care in the United States, including young children, who have arrived in recent weeks with serious conditions.

The move came after an intense lobbying campaign by the right-wing activist Laura Loomer, who called the incoming flights a “national security threat” in a flurry of social media posts starting on Friday that targeted a nonprofit aiding in medical evacuations.

The Trump administration announced Saturday that it had paused approvals of visitor visas for people from Gaza, a key pathway for those seeking medical care in the United States, including young children who arrived in recent weeks with serious conditions.

The State Department said it would assess the process behind those visas. “All visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped while we conduct a full and thorough review,” the department said in a statement on X Saturday morning.

The move came after an intense lobbying campaign by the right-wing activist Laura Loomer, who called the incoming flights a “national security threat” in a flurry of social media posts starting on Friday that targeted a nonprofit aiding in medical evacuations.

Just weeks ago, the nonprofit, HEAL Palestine, an Ohio-based group that helps Palestinian families and children, began orchestrating what it called the “largest single medical evacuation of injured children from Gaza to the U.S.,” bringing injured and ill Gazan children to the United States for care.

To date, the group says it has evacuated 63 injured children for treatment, including 11, from age 6 to 15, who were flown to hospitals in nine U.S. cities this month. Many of the children had lost limbs during the conflict in Gaza. They are expected to travel to Egypt to rejoin their families once their medical care is completed, according to HEAL Palestine.

The group, which was founded last year and also operates food kitchens in Gaza, did not respond to requests for comment.

Earlier this month, Dr. Zeena Salman, a co-founder of HEAL Palestine, said in a statement that the medical evacuation flights were a matter of life or death. “These children could not wait,” Dr. Salman said. “Their lives are at stake, and this mission is about giving them a future.”

Julia Gelatt, the associate director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute, said that more than 9,000 people with travel documents from the Palestinian Authority had entered the United States on visitor visas in the 2024 fiscal year.

“This move is consistent with the Trump administration’s overall treatment of immigrants as constituting a threat to U.S. public safety,” Ms. Gelatt said. “But it is extremely hard to imagine how someone coming to the U.S. for lifesaving medical treatment would present a national security risk.”

Ms. Loomer, who wields extraordinary power in shaping Trump administration decisions over personnel and policy despite not having an official role in government, said she first learned of the flights earlier this month.

“I felt like this is something that needs attention,” she said in an interview. “Under the Trump administration, they are actively importing Gazans into the U.S. Clearly this is not what we voted for.”

On social media, Ms. Loomer called attention to a video posted on Aug. 6 by HEAL Palestine, showing Palestinian children arriving at the San Francisco airport.

She subsequently posted about flights to St. Louis, San Antonio and Houston and claimed without providing evidence that the nonprofit was connected to Hamas, tagging state and federal officials in her posts.

Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, responded to her late on Friday on X, saying that he was “deeply concerned about the incoming flights” and was making inquiries.

Ms. Loomer said she spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday night to alert him to the flights and what she called the threat of an Islamic invasion.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Ms. Loomer has a long history of anti-Islam activism. In 2017, she wrote a social media post that cheered the drowning deaths of 2,000 refugees who were trying to flee violence in Syria and other countries with large Muslim populations by crossing the Mediterranean.

For years, she has pushed for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Sunni Islamist movement, to be designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, lobbying both members of Congress and the administration. Last week, Mr. Rubio said such a designation from the State Department was “in the works.”

Medical flights for children affected by the conflict in Gaza have been occurring for well over a year, organized by a variety of charities.

Dr. Mohammad Subeh, an emergency room physician who volunteers for HEAL Palestine, said that he had previously treated some of the children who recently arrived to the Bay Area during his time in Gaza. He said that the injuries included orthopedic trauma and severe burns and that they were exacerbated by malnutrition.

“I am saddened to see fear and hate permeate within a small yet vocal segment of our society, whereby people have dehumanized children,” he said, by pushing for policies to withhold “life- and limb-saving care.”

Andrew Miller, a former senior State Department official on Israeli-Palestinian affairs in the Biden administration, said that Gazans could only get visas to the U.S. by appearing at an embassy in Jerusalem, Cairo or Amman and undergo security checks.

“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 said, adding: “From what I saw, any insinuation that we were taking an unusual security risk in these cases is baseless.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5763167&forum_id=2#49190937)