The Visa Law That Now Reaches Everywhere

In early May, the United States revoked tourist visas for five of the seven board members of La Nación, Costa Rica's leading newspaper. The paper had been investigating President Rodrigo Chaves — a US-aligned leader who had recently agreed to accept third-country deportees — for corruption and sexual harassment ^[1].

However, it is unprecedented in Costa Rica’s recent history for visas to be revoked from members of the board of a general-interest and independent newspaper. — Banco de la Nación Argentina

Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed the revocations as imposing costs on those who use positions of authority to undermine Costa Rica's interests ^[1]. The legal authority was Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which bars entry to anyone whose presence the Secretary of State determines would have "potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences" for the United States. It is the same provision the administration invoked weeks earlier to revoke green cards from Iranian nationals tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the family of Qasem Soleimani ^[2].

America can never become home for anti-American terrorists or their families – and under the Trump Administration, it never will. — Marco Rubio

Over the past four months, the administration has stretched Section 212(a)(3)(C) across an expanding set of targets, and the common thread is not nationality or alliance. It is alignment. The statute's use against Iranian regime loyalists was the intuitive case — the kind of target the provision was designed for. In April, the administration went further, revoking not just visas but green cards for named individuals tied to the IRGC and Soleimani family, arresting them, and signaling plans to expand to 3,000 to 4,000 Iranian elites ^[2]. That same month, it imposed visa restrictions on 26 individuals in the Western Hemisphere acting on behalf of adversarial powers like China — targeting people in friendly or neutral Central American states, not the states themselves ^[3]. In June, it barred more than 100 Nicaraguan officials and their families, bringing the total barred to over 2,350, after a political prisoner died in state custody ^[4]. It banned TPLF hardliners in Ethiopia for undermining a peace deal ^[5]. Each of these was a precision action — named individuals, not nationalities — and each used the same legal authority. Then the circle widened. In March, the administration arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident and Columbia graduate student, and detained him for 104 days. Rubio invoked the same Section 212(a)(3)(C) standard to justify the detention. The Board of Immigration Appeals issued a final removal order in April ^[6]. Khalil's offense was his role in pro-Palestinian campus protests.

The government had deprived me of my liberty, not because I had broken any laws, but because it didn’t like what I had to say. — Mahmoud Khalil

In May, the administration threatened to terminate visa-free travel for all 27 European Union nations unless the EU grants US access to European police databases by December 31 ^[7]. The same month, the State Department began requiring nonimmigrant visa applicants to affirm they do not fear persecution in their home countries; anyone admitting fear faces immediate denial ^[8]. In June, it imposed visa bans on foreign disinformation researchers and content moderation professionals, including the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate and the co-founder of the Global Disinformation Index, following European Union fines against Elon Musk's X ^[9]. Rubio accused them of complicity in what he called a censorship-industrial complex ^[9]. Judge James Boasberg blocked the policy with a ruling that drew a sharp line.

A lawful permanent resident working on a platform’s trust-and-safety team, a noncitizen researcher urging stronger disinformation labels, a compliance employee helping apply moderation rules, or an advocacy leader pressing advertisers away from sites that spread falsehoods could reasonably understand the policy to place their immigration status at risk—not because they wield foreign sovereign power or facilitate its censorship, but simply because they work in content moderation. — James Boasberg

This month, Rubio imposed new visa restrictions on foreigners who finance, incite, or support far-left terrorist groups, framing ideological affiliation as a counterterrorism matter ^[10]. And India — a strategic partner — began diplomatic engagement with Washington after DHS shortened student visa grace periods from 60 to 30 days and removed indefinite residence for journalists and exchange visitors ^[11]. That a single provision of immigration law now covers both Iranian regime loyalists and Costa Rican newspaper editors is the pattern the past four months have produced. The statute does not distinguish between them; the administration's application of it no longer does either. Meanwhile, the other track — the broad nationality-based bans — is collapsing. In June, a federal judge blocked the administration's immigration freeze for 39 countries, ruling that USCIS used national security concerns as a pretext and that the hold arises solely by the happenstance of birth ^[12]. The broad bans face at least 33 lawsuits, and judges have ordered USCIS to resume processing ^[13]. The precision track faces fewer judicial obstacles. When the administration targets named individuals under Section 212(a)(3)(C) rather than entire nationalities, courts have less to grab onto. A nationality ban is a bright-line rule a judge can strike down. An individual determination that someone's presence would cause adverse foreign policy consequences is a discretionary judgment courts are reluctant to second-guess. The administration has reinforced this asymmetry by removing judges who get in the way: in April, it fired six immigration judges, including two who had blocked deportations of pro-Palestinian student activists, part of a wider purge of more than 113 judges since Trump returned to office ^[14]. The result is a visa system in which the legal concept of security risk has stretched far beyond its original boundaries. The same statute that keeps out Iranian regime loyalists now reaches into the newsrooms of allied democracies, the seminar rooms of American universities, and the research offices of European nonprofits. The dividing line is no longer ally versus adversary. It is aligned versus misaligned — and the statute, as the administration reads it, does not care which side of the old line you stand on.