SAN JOSE – The United States has taken the significant step of revoking visas for several executives from La Nación, a prominent Costa Rican media outlet. This move has sparked allegations that the U.S., alongside Costa Rica’s aligned government, is using visa revocations to target and suppress critics and political adversaries.
On Sunday, the board of directors of La Nación made a public statement, prominently featured on their front page, revealing that board members first discovered their U.S. visa cancellations through reports in media favoring the government.
La Nación has been a persistent critic of the current Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves, a staunch ally of former U.S. President Donald Trump. Chaves has agreed to a deal allowing the acceptance of up to 100 third-country deportees monthly, aligning with Trump’s intensified deportation policies.
The publication, a target of President Chaves’ ire since it reported on sexual harassment allegations during his 2022 campaign, stated that no explanation was provided by the U.S. for the visa cancellations.
The U.S. State Department has not yet offered any comment on the situation.
“We fully acknowledge the right of the United States, as with any sovereign nation, to set entry conditions,” La Nación commented. “Nevertheless, it is unprecedented in Costa Rica’s modern history for board members of an independent, general-interest newspaper to have their visas revoked.”
The move appeared to mark the latest instance of the Trump administration deploying immigration restrictions to punish its political foes, and prompted sharp criticism from political opposition and press freedom organizations in Costa Rica, which demanded that Costa Rican and U.S. authorities provide an explanation for what happened.
“If this decision is based on their critical stance toward this government, it would be yet another troubling signal for our democratic system,” the organizations said in a statement, adding that failing to provide transparent information would “constitute an unacceptable form of complicity.”
Mauricio Herrera, journalist and former Costa Rican communications minister from 2015 to 2018, went a step further, saying “there is no doubt that the cancellation of visas for its board of directors is in response to a request from the Costa Rican government.”
“The sanction seeks to intimidate those who dare to dissent and exercise their freedom of expression,” Herrera told The Associated Press.
A string of high-profile individuals have had their visas canceled in Costa Rica, where the aggressive governing style of conservative President Chaves has drawn criticism for eroding democratic norms.
Last year, the U.S. revoked the visa of Nobel laureate and former Costa Rican President Óscar Arias, an outspoken critic of President Trump, as well as that of his brother, then-legislative president Rodrigo Arias, who said he believed the U.S. decision was made at the request of Chaves.
Opposition lawmakers — like Francisco Nicolás from the centrist National Liberation Party and independent Cynthia Córdoba, both known for their vocal criticism of Chaves — also had their U.S. visas canceled in recent months, as did Constitutional Court Judge Fernando Cruz, an advocate for migrant rights who last month found himself unable to travel to the U.S. to receive an award from Northwestern Law School.
Chaves, who has cooperated extensively with the Trump administration to receive deportees from other countries and extradite suspected drug traffickers to the U.S., will leave office on Friday and hand over power to his successor, President-elect Laura Fernández.
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Associated Press writer Isabel Debre in Buenos Aires, Argentina contributed.
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