The US State Department temporarily suspended immigrant visa interview scheduling worldwide starting Tuesday, according to a department spokesperson cited by Reuters and reported by Folha de S.Paulo. The move, framed as part of a global training initiative for consular officers, is the latest chapter in a broader crackdown that has been restricting and canceling visas across Latin America for months, including cases involving Brazilian, Mexican, Chilean and Argentine officials, according to a CNN Brasil report.
Leading the policy is Christopher Landau, US deputy secretary of state, who has become known on social media as 'the Visa Revoker,' a nickname he openly embraces. The most prominent case came in September 2025, when the State Department announced it had revoked the visa of then Colombian president Gustavo Petro after he urged American soldiers to disobey orders from President Donald Trump during a speech in New York.
Brazil had already seen the same tool used against it: the State Department revoked the visas of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes and other Brazilian magistrates, alleging they were leading a 'political witch hunt' against former president Jair Bolsonaro. Landau did not formally announce that measure but publicly joined the criticism of Moraes, deepening diplomatic friction between Washington and Brasilia.
Mexico and South America also targeted
In Mexico, more than 50 politicians had their visas canceled over alleged drug trafficking ties in Trump's first ten months back in office, according to a Reuters count cited by CNN Brasil, though the identities of most were not disclosed. Among the known cases is the governor of Baja California, who denied any link to organized crime. In August, Andres Manuel Lopez Beltran, son of former Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, said his visa had been canceled and blamed Landau and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. In Argentina, the US embassy warned company executives in July that visas could be restricted for anyone doing business with China's Huawei. In Chile, the US revoked the visas of three officials involved in a Chile-China undersea cable project in March.
For Beata Wojna, an international relations professor at Mexico's Tecnologico de Monterrey and former Polish ambassador to Mexico, the political use of visas is no longer the exception.
Getting a visa is no longer enough; now you also need to know how to keep it. Visas, like trade, energy or critical minerals, are becoming instruments of pressure.
She wrote this on X, as quoted by CNN Brasil.
A wider mass-revocation plan is in the works
The State Department confirmed to CNN that it is preparing to revoke work or business visas held by thousands of people who entered the US under those permits and later applied for asylum. According to estimates from the Associated Press cited in the report, the total number of people affected by asylum applications filed since 2016 could reach 200,000, which would make it the largest visa revocation campaign in US history. Separately, the temporary suspension of interview scheduling, first reported by the Financial Times, applies only to immigrant visas for people seeking to settle in the country, with no indication so far that tourist visas are affected. Contacted by Folha, the US embassy in Brasilia had not responded by the time of publication.
For context: an 'agrement,' a diplomatic term sometimes used in Brazilian coverage of this story, refers to the formal approval a host country gives before accepting a new foreign ambassador. It is a separate process from the visa revocations described here, but part of the same strained US-Brazil diplomatic backdrop.