Fully enforce INA section 243(d) visa sanctions on recalcitrant countries

Partially done

Printed page 177 6. Department of State

“Visa sanctions under section 243(d) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), enacted into law to motivate countries to accept the return of any nationals who have been ordered removed from the U.S., should be quickly and fully enforced. Recalcitrant countries that do not accept receipt of their returned nationals will risk the suspension of issuance of all immigrant visas, all nonimmigrant visas, or all visas.”

What has happened

Dec 16, 2025 Partially done
Extended and deepened on the same authority: the proclamation of 2025-12-16 fully suspends entry of both immigrants and nonimmigrants from a longer list, four country recitals pairing an overstay figure from the DHS Entry/Exit Overstay Report with a finding that the country has historically failed or refused to accept back its removable nationals — Laos, Sierra Leone and South Sudan among the full suspensions, The Gambia among the partial ones. Still not 243(d): no discontinuation of visa issuance under section 243(d) has been announced for any country.
- Proclamation of December 16, 2025, Restricting and Limiting the Entry of Foreign Nationals To Protect the Security of the United States (entry suspensions whose recitals cite failure to accept back removable nationals for Laos, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and The Gambia)
  Primary Executive branch Dec 16, 2025
Jun 4, 2025 Partially done
The pressure was applied, but through section 212(f) rather than section 243(d). Proclamation 10949 suspended entry from nineteen countries, the President's findings resting in part on countries' “historic failure to accept back their removable nationals” alongside overstay rates and vetting deficiencies. It reaches further than 243(d) in one sense — it bars entry, not merely visa issuance — and less far in another: it is a country list chosen on several grounds, not the automatic issuance suspension the Quote describes.
- Proclamation 10949, Restricting the Entry of Foreign Nationals To Protect the United States From Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats (countries selected in part on “historic failure to accept back their removable nationals”)
  Primary Executive branch Jun 4, 2025
Jan 20, 2025 Attempted
Ordered on day one, with no effect yet. Executive Order 14159, section 13 (“Recalcitrant Countries”), directs the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security to “cooperate and effectively implement, as appropriate, the sanctions provided by section 243(d) of the INA”, and to ensure that diplomatic negotiations include foreign states' acceptance of their removable nationals.
- Executive Order 14159, Protecting the American People Against Invasion, section 13 (Recalcitrant Countries): the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security shall cooperate and effectively implement the sanctions provided by section 243(d) of the INA
  Primary Executive branch Jan 20, 2025

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Negative search on the named authority: a Federal Register full-text search for “243(d)” since 2025-01-20 returns three documents — EO 14159 itself, the CHNV parole termination notice, and a 2026 employment-authorization proposed rule — and none imposes 243(d) sanctions. A search for “recalcitrant” returns seven, all unrelated except EO 14159. The Department’s own 2025-2026 press index (2,313 releases) contains dozens of visa-restriction announcements and not one 243(d) discontinuation.
The reciprocity rule reissued 2025-03-26 (9 FAM 403.8-4(B)) also ties visa validity to whether a country is “uncooperative or at-risk-of-noncompliance (ARON) for removals” — the same lever applied through reciprocity rather than 243(d). See #479.
Paired with #454 (Chapter 5, p. 167), the same recalcitrant-country sanctions ask carrying an extra first limb about DHS leading Western Hemisphere engagement. Tested on review for whether the two are one ask — they would be if a single instrument satisfied both — and not merged: that first limb means no single instrument would satisfy both. They are assessed consistently on the instruments they share, and this item’s negative on the named statute answered the question left open on #454. Both stand at partial.
Boundary: partial because the ask names a specific statutory sanction that has not been used, while its substance (visa consequences for countries refusing returns) has been delivered by proclamation.
The § 243(d) negative was re-measured on 2026-09-03, when state.gov could be read, and it holds. The Department’s press-release sitemaps were listed again — 2,339 unique URLs spanning 2025-04 through 2026-09-02 — and not one address contains “243”, “visa-sanction”, “discontinu”, “recalcitrant” or “visa-issuance”. The 33 URLs containing “visa” are all targeted restrictions on named individuals or classes of officials, plus two country-agnostic overstay instruments (visa bonds expanded to 50 countries, 2026-03-18; more than 175,000 visas revoked, 2026-08-10), none of which is a country-wide discontinuation of visa issuance under the statute this Quote names. Where the negative stops: it covers 2025-04 onward and not 2025-01 to 2025-03, which are absent from the press-release sitemap; it does not cover media notes under other post types, and § 243(d) discontinuations are frequently sent to posts by cable without any press release. state.gov is no longer serving the identical “Technical Difficulties” page an earlier search recorded — a control test on a nonsense release address returns a not-found error while real addresses return the article — so this is now a measurement rather than an artifact of a broken site. Read together with #454, which shares the instrument and differs on the verb: two items resting on one document must still be assessed consistently.

Action: restrict
Object: Section 243(d) visa sanctions
ID: 481