Rubio vows to keep stripping visas after furor over snatched student

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday he has canceled more than 300 visas in a crackdown on anti-Israel activism and vowed to keep doing so, brushing aside furor after masked agents snatched a student.

Rubio, a staunch supporter of Israel, said that he personally signed off on every visa revocation and rejected charges he was violating US protections of free speech.

Asked about a report on the number of visas he has stripped, mostly for students, Rubio said: "Maybe more than 300 at this point. We do it every day."

"Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas," he told reporters on a visit to Guyana.

"At some point I hope we run out because we've gotten rid of them," Rubio said.

Since his return to the White House on January 20, President Donald Trump has moved aggressively against student activists and universities over the disruptive protests that swept US colleges campuses in response to the Gaza war.

Earlier this week, a video went viral of a 30-year-old Turkish graduate student, Rumeysa Ozturk, being detained by masked, plain-clothed figures near Tufts University in Massachusetts.

Ozturk had penned an op-ed in a student newspaper decrying Israel's actions in Gaza as "genocide." She now faces deportation.

Immigration lawyer Mahsa Khanbabai complained that Ozturk had been taken to a detention center in the southern state of Louisiana, despite a court order that she remain in Massachusetts, and was denied access to legal representation.

"Masked DHS agents unlawfully arrested my client," she said, referring to the Department of Homeland Security.

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat from Massachusetts, accused the Trump administration of moving to "abduct students with legal status."

"This is a horrifying violation of Rumeysa's constitutional rights to due process and free speech. She must be immediately released," Pressley said in a statement.