() Chinese students with ties to their country’s Communist Party or “studying in critical fields” will have their visas revoked, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media Wednesday.

Rubio’s statement on X and through his department comes as the Trump administration is engaged in a trade war with China and as it directs U.S. embassies and consulates to pause scheduling visa interviews for international students while considering ways to revise social media screening and vetting for applicants.

“The U.S. will begin revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” Rubio said on the social platform X.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” Rubio said. “We will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong.”

His post did not disclose any additional details, but it comes a day after the Trump administration directed U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide to pause scheduling visa interviews for international students as it mulls expanding “social media screening and vetting” for applicants.

The State Department issued an internal cable Tuesday, signed by Rubio, stating that “effective immediately, in preparation for an expansion of required social media screening and vetting, consular sections should not add any additional student or exchange visitor (F, M, and J) visa appointment capacity until further guidance is issued [separate telegram], which we anticipate in the coming days,” multiple outlets reported. 

Earlier this year, the administration revoked the visas of thousands of international students.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement later restored more than 1,500 foreign student visa registrations in its reporting system.

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) moved to terminate Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program, consequently barring the Ivy League school from enrolling international students. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said the international students at Harvard would need to transfer to another institution or risk jeopardizing their legal status.

On Wednesday, President Trump suggested imposing a 15 percent cap on the percentage of foreign students that Harvard University and other U.S. higher education institutions can admit.

The president, while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, suggested that international students take up too much of the student body and raised issues over some of the foreign students he called “troublemakers.”

“These countries aren’t helping us. They’re not investing in Harvard … we are. So why would 31 percent why would a number so big,” he said. “I think they should have a cap of maybe around 15 percent, not 31 percent.”

“We have people [who] want to go to Harvard and other schools, [but] they can’t get in because we have foreign students there. But I want to make sure that the foreign students are people that can love our country. We don’t want to see shopping centers exploding. We don’t want to see the kind of riots that you had,” Trump said. “And I’ll tell you what, many of those students didn’t go anywhere. Many of those students were troublemakers caused by the radical left lunatics in this country.”

He also said, without elaborating, that he doesn’t want “radical people” coming to U.S. as students and “making trouble in our country.”

partner The Hill contributed to this report.