100 days of the State Department with «America First»

One hundred days ago, the borders of the United States were open, while China could close the Panama Canal at the time Xi Jinping decided. Our leaders seemed to be satisfied with allowing violence to become the permanent norm, from Ukraine to Gaza, through our own university enclosures and the southern border. From all positions abroad and offices in Washington, there were memoranda that described what we should do, what we could not do, but not what it was possible to do.

Only a hundred days later, the change has arrived. From the reorganization of the department to face the challenges of the 21st century, to transparency in foreign aid, the guarantee of Panama’s departure from the “La Strip and the Route” initiative, and the collaboration with regional partners to deport illegal immigrants and designate ruthless cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, our team has shown that it is possible not only to admire the problems, but also to solve them.

In the process, The State Department is becoming a smaller mechanism (in English), Eager to comply with the taxpayer. There are no longer offices like the old Global engagement center (Center for global participation), which sought to censor the American people. There are no tens of billions of dollars in contracts with NGOs in the country and abroad that often undermine the interests and foreign policy of the United States. And we are no longer in the days when merit was relegated behind radical and anti -stating ideologies. By consolidating offices, eliminating bureaucracy, and ensuring a culture in which the many talented voices of the State Department can be heard, our ongoing reorganization will cause the United States to have a less expensive and more effective foreign policy.

The State Department has begun, once again, to defend the interests of our citizens abroad. Our hemisphere is our neighborhood and we cannot allow it to be conquered by an adversary. In my first hundred days, I made three trips to our hemisphere, including Central America and the Caribbean, where I stressed that China’s efforts to control critical infrastructure threaten the United States and reached an agreement to end the management of the Panama Canal for Beijing.

I transmitted a message similar to our friends in Europe, making it clear that our broad common interests, especially in resistance to Chinese aggression and Islamic extremism, are precisely the reason why the United States cannot afford to load with the burden of all imaginable conflicts in Europe. At the recent NATO summit that I attended, our allies recognized the need to increase defense expenses not 2 %, as requested in 2017, but 5 %, following the example of countries such as Poland. There was a consensus that ending war in Ukraine benefits both combatants and the entire transatlantic alliance.

During my stay in Europe, I also made it clear that, although they unite a history, a culture and common economic interests, friendship is not a unique way of meaning. It requires honesty when reciprocity is missing, and not only in the scope of defense spending. Efforts to regulate, exclude or censor US companies directly affect the United States and raise questions about how common our values ​​can be. European energy policies also directly affect the United States, since they made the continent depend on Russian gas and presented the “green” supply chains to the control of communist China.

In Africa, the United States needs a commercial policy, not helping, and in the last hundred days the State Department has replaced aid with a firm diplomatic participation aimed at ending conflicts and expanding opportunities for US companies. Last week, the Foreign Ministers of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo joined me here in the State Department to sign a declaration of principles to end a war that has extended one way or another for more than twenty -five years. In Africa, and around the world, our message is that, although Usaid may be closed, the United States is open to business.

There is no American interest more immediate than the protection of our borders. Both during my trips to the region and in dozens of bilateral meetings, I have made it clear that the arrival of millions of foreigners to our border is unacceptable. Foreign countries have the responsibility to prevent their citizens from illegally entering the United States and the duty to help us expel those who are already here. We are working with regional allies in Latin America to achieve agreements that allow the return of their own illegal immigrants, as well as those of third countries. And we have made clear countries less friends, such as Venezuela, than to refuse to receive its citizens constitutes a hostile act. The collaboration is valuable, but the hostility will be punished.

Fundamentally, the State Department has made it clear that a visa is a privilege, not a right. Under the policy of «capture and release”From the Biden Administration, undocumented immigrants were often granted prison exemption after being arrested for crimes such as domestic violence and aggression. There is now a single -infringe policy: capture and revocation. Provided that the government discovers undocumented immigrants violating our laws, we take measures to revoke their visas. Nation

This extends to the thousands of foreign students studying in the United States and abuse our hospitality. When Hamas, one of the world’s best -known terrorist organizations, launched its brutal attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, brutally killing more than 1200 innocent and exhibiting the bodies of babies killed by the streets of Gaza, the Biden administration did very little to protect our Jewish citizens and the US people in general of the foreign terrorist sympathizers who were among them. They allowed university buildings to be invaded by violent thugs and that Jewish students were excluded from classrooms.

No more. According to the Immigration and Nationality Law, any foreigner who «supports or supports terrorist activities or agrees to others to support or support terrorist activities or support a terrorist organization» is inadmissible in the United States, and from now on, that law will apply strictly. The State Department now reviews police information about those students who have a visa and when we find those who have supported terrorists or have abused our hospitality in another way, their visa is immediately revoked.

Terrorists are fugitives not only in the United States, but throughout the world. With the unconditional support of the United States Department of State, Israel has weakened Hezbollah in Lebanon and has undone to Hamas in Gaza, leaving the terrorist group to the edge of destruction if he does not free his hostages and deposes his weapons. We have reclassified the hutis as what they are: a foreign terrorist organization, and we have made it clear that those who disturb the freedom of navigation and commerce in the Red Sea will run the same destination as the pirates of history. Iran, having seen the consequences that their allies have suffered by challenging the new administration, now seeks an agreement that allows them to save appearances while giving up their nuclear capacity.

I am honored by President Trump deposited in me and I am proud of the work that the State Department has carried out during the last hundred days to implement his agenda and grant priority to the US people. With an imminent reorganization that will boost the talent of the department from bottom to top, the State Department will continue to play a fundamental role in guaranteeing the security and prosperity of the US people over the next four years.

Marco Rubio lent an oath as the 72nd Secretary of State of the United States on January 21, 2025. The Secretary is creating a State Department that places the United States first, «AMERICA First”