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.

But Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other U.S. officials have “broad discretionary authority” to cancel visas “whenever and wherever a compelling U.S. policy interest is at stake,” the State Department said in an email.

The China Factor

For the Chilean officials involved in the undersea cable project, acquiescing to America’s demands did not immediately seem to be enough. About a month after the U.S. diplomat’s initial warning, the State Department announced it was barring those officials and their family members from the United States. Their actions, the department said, had “compromised critical telecommunications infrastructure and undermined regional security.”

For Juan Muñoz, then Chile’s telecommunications minister, the announcement was a “huge reputational hit.”

His visa was eventually reinstated, he said, but the fallout lingered.

“My Wikipedia now says I am a person sanctioned by the United States,” Mr. Muñoz, an academic who studied in California, where three of his children were born, said. “You feel like you have been placed in the same list as the world’s worst troublemakers.”

Chile is not an isolated case. Washington has targeted people elsewhere when it suspects they have facilitated Chinese investments.

This month, an Argentine electric company said it received warnings about visa revocations for executives linked to expanded operations there by Huawei, the Chinese telecom-equipment maker. Peter Lamelas, the U.S. ambassador to Argentina, responded on X, saying that the issue was “a matter of national security.”

And last year, after two opposition lawmakers in Costa Rica criticized a presidential decree banning Chinese 5G vendors like Huawei, the State Department revoked their U.S. visas.

“They are sending a message to political actors that speaking out in support of positions favoring China will bring consequences,” said Johana Obando, one of the Costa Rican lawmakers whose personal and diplomatic visas were canceled.

“It is a way of intimidating decision makers to benefit the United States,” she said.

The State Department, in its April announcement on the expanded visa restriction policy, said it would “use every available tool to protect our national security interests, defend American interests, and promote our region’s safety.”

Reaping Rewards

In shifting its visa policy, the United States has abandoned its post-Cold War crusade for regional rule of law, trading it for a more transactional approach, some analysts contend.

“Corruption, human rights violations or judicial interference no longer matter,” said Ana María Méndez Dardón, the Central America director at the Washington Office on Latin America, a rights group.

As Washington stops prioritizing democratic values, political figures once facing U.S. sanctions are seeing their privileges restored, Ms. Méndez said, after their countries renew friendships with the White House.

During the Biden administration, the United States penalized a number of Central American officials it considered corrupt or anti-democratic under a law known as the Engel List. Even after it lapsed, the administration used a variety of legal tools to continue denying them visas, according to a former State Department official with direct knowledge of the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal operations.

When Mr. Trump took office, the official said, that effort was entirely discontinued.

At least three senior Salvadoran officials placed on the Engel List and close to President Nayib Bukele — who has eagerly aligned with Mr. Trump — quickly benefited.

They included Javier Argueta, then Mr. Bukele’s legal adviser, who faced sanctions for orchestrating the unconstitutional removal of judicial officials; Christian Guevara, head of Mr. Bukele’s legislative faction, penalized for introducing a law that criminalized media coverage of gangs; and José Ernesto Sanabria, Mr. Bukele’s press secretary, cited for pressuring opposition officials to resign under threat of criminal charges.

Mr. Argueta and Mr. Guevara set foot in the United States for the first time in several years — in July and September 2025, respectively — according to travel records that The New York Times reviewed. They have since entered the country multiple times. Mr. Sanabria traveled to Miami more recently, in June.

Mr. Argueta told The Times that his visa had indeed been restored but declined an interview request. Mr. Sanabria did not respond to a request for comment. Nor did Mr. Guevara, but he has posted photos on social media talking to U.S. lawmakers or posing at the White House.

The State Department did not answer specific questions about the reinstatement of visas for former Engel List designees, or whether preventing them from entering the United States remains a priority.

A Stark Break

Visa revocations have also been used to suppress criticism of the Trump administration, or even of U.S.-aligned foreign leaders.

“No recent American administration ever did this kind of open attack on freedom of expression” in a foreign country, Mr. Feeley, the former U.S. ambassador to Panama, argued.

It is also unlikely to end soon, experts said.

On Thursday, Andrés Manuel López Beltrán — the son of Mexico’s left-wing former leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who remains highly influential over the governing party — said that Washington had revoked his visa. The move followed corruption accusations against Mr. López Beltrán, which he has denied. In an open letter to Mr. Trump, he criticized the measure as a politically motivated attack on his father’s political movement.

Jody García contributed reporting from Guatemala City, and John Bartlett from Santiago, Chile.