US halts visa appointments globally amid Trump's immigration crackdown

JUST IN: The US halts visa appointments worldwide as part of Trump's immigration crackdown, with applicants notified their interviews are being rescheduled while consular officers undergo training.

The United States just froze visa appointments worldwide. Every embassy, every consulate, all at once.

Applicants got the notice overnight, your interview is being rescheduled, no new date attached, while consular officers undergo training. You can see what that looks like on the ground here, people waiting at a visa center with paperwork in hand and nowhere to take it.

This is part of Trump's wider immigration crackdown, and the reach of it is what stands out. Students waiting on term dates, workers with job offers, families mid-process, all of them now sitting in the same queue with no clock on the wall. The State Department calls it training. Nobody's said how long training takes.

A global pause with no end date isn't a pause, it's a policy. And millions of people just found that out by email.

This is Angel Manalo, reporting for HIT.