Washington, D.C. – November 18, 2025 – The United States announced on Monday the revocation of visas and imposition of new entry restrictions targeting owners, executives, and senior officials of transportation companies, travel agencies, and tour operators based in Nicaragua who are accused of knowingly facilitating illegal immigration to the United States.
The State Department described the targeted individuals as key players in organized networks that provide charter flights, bus services, and other travel arrangements specifically designed to move migrants through Nicaragua and onward toward the U.S. southern border. The department stated that these entities have profited by exploiting vulnerable people while taking advantage of what it called the Nicaraguan government’s “permissive-by-design” migration policies.
“Investigations indicate the entities these individuals represent facilitated travel through Nicaragua, enabled by the Nicaraguan dictatorship’s deliberate lax enforcement that destabilizes the region and pushes illegal immigration to the United States,” the official statement read. The measures include immediate revocation of any currently valid U.S. visas held by the designated individuals and additional restrictions to prevent their future entry.
The policy is being implemented under Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, a provision that allows the Secretary of State to bar foreign nationals whose presence would have potentially serious adverse consequences for U.S. foreign policy. The exact number of people affected has not been publicly disclosed.
Nicaragua has become a major transit hub for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, Africa, and Asia who fly into Managua on low-cost charter flights before continuing overland through Central America and Mexico. Many of these flights are arranged by private companies that pay substantial landing fees and taxes to Nicaraguan authorities, generating significant revenue for the government.
The Ortega-Murillo administration has maintained visa-free or visa-on-arrival policies for nationals of more than 90 countries, including many with high emigration rates and few direct ties to Nicaragua. Critics, including migration analysts and human rights organizations, have long described this approach as the deliberate “weaponization” of migration in retaliation for U.S. sanctions imposed since 2018 over human rights violations and electoral fraud.
Monday’s action continues a pattern of escalating U.S. measures against individuals and entities seen as complicit in migrant smuggling networks. Similar visa restriction policies were first introduced in November 2023 against charter flight operators and have since been expanded to ground transportation providers and officials who fail to enforce immigration controls. Earlier in 2025, the United States revoked visas from more than 250 Nicaraguan government officials, including immigration and customs officers, on separate human rights grounds.
The decision reflects broader frustration in Washington with Nicaragua’s role in regional migration flows. Since the country’s 2018 political crisis, hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans have fled repression, joining citizens of other nations using Managua as a relatively easy entry point into the hemisphere’s northern migration corridor. The surge has contributed to record encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years, even as overall numbers have declined in 2025 following tougher enforcement measures.
Human rights advocates have expressed concern that cracking down on transportation providers could drive migrants into the hands of even more dangerous criminal smuggling organizations. However, U.S. officials maintain that targeting profiteers is essential to dismantling the business model that encourages risky journeys.
The Nicaraguan government has not issued an official response to the latest visa measures as of Monday evening, though state-controlled media typically dismiss such U.S. actions as imperialist interference.
With these revocations, the United States is sending a clear message to private-sector actors across the region: knowingly facilitating illegal migration for financial gain will result in severe personal consequences, including permanent loss of access to the United States.
