How Laura Loomer halted lifesaving medical visas for Gaza’s children
4 Min Read
Laura Loomer’s online campaign swayed Washington to block treatment for wounded Palestinian children, exposing the influence of Trump’s allies on US policy.
-
Palestinian Jori Abu Tueima, a 7-year-old girl injured in the Israeli genocide on Gaza, sits in an ambulance as the first group of severely wounded Gaza children arrives in Jordan for medical treatment at the King Hussein Bridge border crossing, Tuesday, March 4, 2025. (AP)
When the US State Department announced it was suspending visas for children from Gaza seeking medical treatment, the decision appeared bureaucratic, even procedural. But the policy shift was not the result of an internal review or of a wider strategy debate. Instead, it followed an online pressure campaign from Laura Loomer, a far-right provocateur who proudly calls herself “a proud Islamophobe” and has built her career on weaponizing Islamophobia for political clout.
There are people who want to invade our country and bring HAMAS supporters to our country under the guise of “humanitarianism”. They will use kids who are not in a life or death state to facilitate chain migration to the West and then they will abuse our visa system and our…
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) August 16, 2025
Loomer has built her public persona on provocation and disinformation, often targeting marginalized communities under the guise of activism. Her self-styled image as a “feisty, America First Jewess” masks a pattern of inflammatory rhetoric, conspiratorial claims, and campaigns that have real-world consequences.
Critics describe her as a professional provocateur who leverages fear, prejudice, and misinformation to gain attention and influence, blurring the line between activism and harassment while advancing a far-right political agenda.
On Friday, Loomer posted videos of severely wounded Palestinian children arriving in US hospitals this month, including amputees flown in to receive prosthetic limbs. Rather than expressing sympathy, she smeared the arrivals as “Islamic invaders from a terror hot zone,” mischaracterized their cries of relief as “jihadi chants", and mocked them for what she described as “doing the HAMAS terror whistle.”
NEW:a
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) August 16, 2025
Here is ANOTHER VIDEO of Palestinians from Gaza arriving in Texas this month.
These GAZANS were sent to Dallas and San Antonio.
In the video below, those GAZANS arrived in Houston.
Texas is being flooded with Palestinian from Gaza by @healpalestine_. The media wants… https://t.co/Z45q2y2m1A pic.twitter.com/94a8ky3dpm
The footage was hardly exclusive, as Loomer claimed. One clip was lifted from a medical charity’s Instagram account; another from the Houston Chronicle’s YouTube channel. But her distortions went viral in the far-right ecosystem that feeds directly into the Trump orbit. By Saturday, the State Department issued its abrupt halt: “All visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped while we conduct a full and thorough review.”
A Trump ally with outsized reach
Loomer’s campaign highlights how fringe figures have leveraged Trump’s presidency to exert real influence over US policy. Once banned from major platforms, she now enjoys direct access to conservative politicians and proximity to the president himself, frequently amplifying narratives that blend Islamophobia, misinformation, and political loyalty tests.
Her posts even tagged Secretary of State Marco Rubio, miscasting him as personally responsible for the visas. Despite her inaccurate data, accuracy has never been central to Loomer’s strategy; outrage has.
BREAKING: @realDonaldTrump and @SecRubio have immediately halted visas to Gazans that were being issued by deep state actors while we get to the bottom of how this national security risk was allowed.
— Congressman Randy Fine (@RepFine) August 16, 2025
Massive credit needs to be given to @LauraLoomer for uncovering this and… https://t.co/YmtXzOh4Ti
By the time the visas were suspended, she was already claiming victory. “This is fantastic news,” she wrote, before calling for Palestinians from Gaza to be added to Trump’s revived travel ban. “The US is not the world’s hospital!”
From online agitation to policy action
The speed of the policy reversal underscored how swiftly online campaigns can shape official decisions under Trump. Republican Congressman Randy Fine openly credited Loomer for the halt, writing, “Massive credit needs to be given to @LauraLoomer for uncovering this and making me and other officials aware. Well done, Laura.”
But medical charities and rights groups painted a darker picture. The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, which has organized thousands of evacuations for Palestinian children over the past three decades, called the move “dangerous and inhumane.”
“Medical evacuations are a lifeline for the children of Gaza who would otherwise face unimaginable suffering or death due to the collapse of medical infrastructure,” it said.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) denounced the suspension as part of the Trump administration’s “intentional cruelty” and evidence of “complicity with Israel’s genocide,” noting the bitter irony of welcoming far-right Israeli politicians to Washington while shutting the door on dying children.
Historical echo
Criticism also came from Silicon Valley, where Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham drew a stark historical parallel. “If Laura Loomer had been around in 1940, she’d have been trying to prevent Jewish refugees from entering the US,” he wrote. “And if Trump had been president then, she’d have succeeded.”
For Loomer, the episode marks another political win. For the children of Gaza, it represents a devastating loss, one that lays bare the ease with which an extremist’s disinformation can be translated into state policy when it aligns with the administration’s agenda.
