When Chilean officials signed an authorization for a 12,000-mile undersea cable connecting the country to Hong Kong, they were thrilled. They said the Chinese project would boost national connectivity and even reach Chile’s remote Easter Island.
But the mood shifted abruptly later that day in January after a senior official from the U.S. Embassy in Santiago met with Guillermo Petersen, the chief of cabinet at Chile’s telecommunications ministry. According to Mr. Petersen, the American official warned that the project could increase the risk of Chinese cyberattacks and that, if Chile forged ahead, the United States would issue a travel ban not only for the officials involved, but for their spouses and children as well.
Across Latin America, the Trump administration has deployed aggressive tactics to tighten its grip on the region. They include crippling tariffs and economic sanctions, strikes on dozens of boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, wading into foreign elections and the capture of the president of a nation in his own capital.
But one of its most agile and surgical tools is also deeply personal: the U.S. visa.
The meeting in Chile lasted just six minutes, Mr. Petersen said. But that was enough to persuade his government to put the project on hold.
“It was basically a threat,” Claudio Araya, then Chile’s telecommunications under secretary, said this month.
The U.S. ambassador to Chile, Brandon Judd, said in a statement that these actions “were not a surprise,” as they followed years of discussions on the matter.
Visa sanctions, Mr. Judd said, “are not meant to punish, but to change behavior.” He added, “They did exactly that in this case.”
Typically used in the past to keep out security threats, fight corruption or defend democratic institutions, travel permissions have been weaponized under the current State Department, experts say. The U.S. government has revoked visas to target foreign leaders, ambassadors and other officials, judges and journalists, among others — while quietly reinstating visas for some like-minded allies.
A Regional Stick
The Trump administration has been clear about its intentions to use this tool in the Americas.
In a statement in April, the State Department announced that it had expanded its policy on restricting visas to target those in the Western Hemisphere who “carry out activities that are adversarial to and undermine America’s interests.”
Washington has used its visa playbook to pursue varying goals. In some countries, the United States has aimed to replace China’s footprint with its own. In others, it has rewarded compliant, right-wing partners, even by punishing their political enemies. Elsewhere, it has pressured governments into folding to U.S. demands or penalized those who question its policies.
This month, the Trump administration rescinded the visa of Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, the Brazilian ambassador in Washington, in a tit-for-tat retaliation over Brazil’s delaying the approval of President Trump’s ambassador nominee and refusing entry to several other U.S. diplomats. The U.S. government had previously stripped a Brazilian Supreme Court justice of his visa for prosecuting former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally.
Revoking a visa, while sometimes performative, can also send a powerful message, said John Feeley, a career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Panama from 2015 to 2018. It can undermine a person’s political authority and sever personal or professional ties to the United States.
“A congressman or a prosecutor without a U.S. visa,” Mr. Feeley said, “is somebody who is flying with a broken wing.”
Some of Washington’s allies say the Trump administration is well within its rights when restricting visas.
“That falls under the strict sovereignty of the United States,” Manuel Tovar, the foreign minister of Costa Rica, where at least 15 opposition figures and critics have had their U.S. visas revoked, said in an interview. “We shouldn’t interfere in matters outside our jurisdiction, just as we expect no nation to determine Costa Rica’s immigration policy or decide who is granted entry into our country.”
Because visa records are confidential, the U.S. government rarely discusses the details of specific revocations, making it difficult to quantify how much the Trump administration has used this tool for political ends.
- Credits: The New York Times
- Authors: Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, Emma Bubola, Gabriel Labrador and David Bolaños
- Photo: Kenny Holston
