President Donald Trump's administration has revoked the visa of a Nigerian Nobel laureate after he compared Trump to a brutal dictator, according to a new report.
The Guardian reported on Tuesday that the Trump administration revoked the visa of Wole Soyinka, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1986. Soyinga had previously held permanent residency in the U.S. until he destroyed his green card in protest of Trump's first term, according to the report.
“I want to assure the consulate…that I’m very content with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka told the outlet.
Soyinga showed journalists the letter he received from the Trump administration, the report states. "It cited regulations allowing “a consular officer, the secretary, or a department official to whom the secretary has delegated this authority … to revoke a nonimmigrant visa at any time, in his or her discretion.”
The Nobel laureate described the letter as a "curious love letter" as he read it out loud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria on Tuesday, according to the report.
Soyinka had previously compared Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, who is estimated to have killed as many as 500,000 people during his regime. The writer speculated that the comparison "might have struck a nerve and contributed to the US consulate’s decision," according to the report.