Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

5. Department of Homeland Security · Notable

Sanction countries that refuse to accept deportees

Partially done

167 5. Department of Homeland Security

“Department of State: Allow DHS to lead international engagement in the Western Hemisphere on issues of security and migration. Additionally, quickly and aggressively address recalcitrant countries' failure to accept deportees by imposing stiff sanctions until deportees are in fact accepted for return (not just promised to be taken).”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    Extended and deepened on the same authority. The Proclamation of 2025-12-16 fully suspends the entry of immigrants and nonimmigrants from a longer list of countries, and four of the recitals pair a DHS Entry/Exit Overstay Report figure 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 `partial` and not `done`, for the same two reasons as the June proclamation: the instrument is section 212(f) entry suspension chosen on several grounds, not the section 243(d) visa cut-off the Quote's companion ask names, and nothing evidences the Quote's own test -- sanctions kept on until deportees are in fact accepted. The section 243(d) half of the ask remains unused; see the negative search below, carried across from #481.

  2. Partially done

    The Proclamation of 2025-06-04 restricting entry of foreign nationals imposes full or partial entry suspensions on named countries and gives, among its grounds, that the country has historically refused or failed to accept back its removable nationals -- Cuba and Laos among them. That is a stiff sanction actually imposed on recalcitrant countries, which is the second half of the Quote. It is `partial` and not `done` because the sanctions are entry restrictions bundled with overstay-rate and vetting grounds rather than the section 243(d) visa cut-off the executive order pointed at, and because the Quote's test -- sanctions kept on until deportees are in fact accepted -- is not something any allowlisted source evidences.

  3. Attempted

    Executive Order 14159 section 13 directs the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security to cooperate in implementing the visa sanctions of INA section 243(d), 8 U.S.C. 1253(d), to the maximum extent permitted by law, and to treat a foreign state's failure or delay in verifying its nationals as grounds for those and any other available sanctions. A directive to use the sanction, before any sanction is imposed.

Research log

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

Research notes

Text of the Proclamation read at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-06-10/html/2025-10669.htm; the phrase “accept back its removable nationals” appears seven times, country by country.

  • The first half of the Quote — let DHS lead Western Hemisphere engagement on security and migration — is a State Department internal arrangement with no public instrument found; it is noted here rather than tracked as a separate event.

  • Individual section 243(d) discontinuations are announced by the State Department, whose PDFs and press pages refused to open for us. Federal Register full-text search for “8 U.S.C. 1253(d)” over the window returns three documents, all of which are already accounted for (EO 14159, the CHNV parole termination, and a 2026 employment-authorization proposed rule).

  • Has State announced any section 243(d) discontinuation? Answered 2026-09-01. #481 answered it on the same authority and the same window: the Department’s own 2025-2026 press index (2,313 releases) carries dozens of visa-restriction announcements and not one section 243(d) discontinuation, and Federal Register full-text search for “243(d)” since 2025-01-20 returns only the three documents above. The negative therefore reaches both rulemaking and agency practice on the named statute, which is as far as a negative can reach here (a negative search must say how far it reaches). It confirms the reading already on both items rather than moving either: the substance of the sanction was delivered by proclamation, the named statutory sanction was not.

  • Not merged with #481. The two were tested against our rule that one ask is one Recommendation, and are different asks: #481 is the section 243(d) enforcement ask standing alone, while this Quote pairs the sanctions ask with a first limb — that State let DHS lead Western Hemisphere engagement on security and migration — which no 243(d) instrument would satisfy. They are leveled consistently on the instruments they share (EO 14159 section 13, and the June and December 2025 proclamations) and both stand at partial.

  • Re-run on a readable state.gov, 2026-09-03: the negative holds and its edges are now known. We had recorded state.gov as serving an identical “Technical Difficulties” page to every address. It does not any more: https://www.state.gov/ returns 19,000 characters of real content to a browser, and a control test confirms the site discriminates — a nonsense release address among the spokesperson’s August 2026 releases returns page not found while real ones return the article. The press-release sitemaps (the State press-release sitemap and its second and third parts) were listed in full: 2,339 unique press-release URLs, spanning 2025-04 through 2026-09-02. Zero contain “243”, “visa-sanction”, “discontinu”, “recalcitrant” or “visa-issuance”. The 33 that contain “visa” are, without exception, targeted restrictions on named individuals or classes of officials rather than a country-wide § 243(d) discontinuation.

  • Where that negative stops, and it matters. It reaches State’s press releases from 2025-04 onward. It does not reach 2025-01 through 2025-03, which are absent from the press-release sitemap and presumably sit in an archive that was not located; it does not reach media notes filed under other kinds of post (briefings, reports); and § 243(d) discontinuations are frequently communicated to posts by cable with no press release at all. So the reading is: no § 243(d) country action is on State’s public record for that period, not that none was taken.

  • Re-run again 2026-09-06, from the DHS end this time, and the negative holds. state.gov opened in this search and its sitemap index is intact (85 children; the three press-release sitemaps and the briefings sitemap, 42 items, were re-walked, with no hit for “243”, “recalcitrant” or “discontinu”). The new reading is on the other half of the statutory machinery: § 243(d) is triggered by the Secretary of Homeland Security’s notification to the Secretary of State, so ICE is the agency that would know, and ICE publishes a standing page for exactly this. ICE’s visa sanctions page (ice.gov/remove/visa-sanctions), titled Visa Sanctions Against Multiple Countries Pursuant to Section 243(d) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, explains the mechanism — “the Secretary of Homeland Security notifies the Secretary of State that multiple governments have denied or unreasonably delayed the acceptance of a national or nationals ordered removed … these sanctions may remain in place until the Secretary of Homeland Security notifies the Secretary of State that removal cooperation has improved” — and lists, under Related Information, exactly two items: a 2017 DHS announcement of visa sanctions on four countries, and EO 13768 of 2017. The page’s own stamp reads “Updated: 01/22/2025”. So ICE’s § 243(d) page has not been touched since the second day of the administration and names no sanction from the window. That is a negative about that page and no more (an agency page tells us only what it showed on the day it was read), and it is recorded here as a lead rather than as Evidence because the page’s staleness is as consistent with neglect as with inaction. It does mean the two obvious agency indexes, State’s press releases and ICE’s own § 243(d) page, agree.

  • Two country-agnostic overstay instruments are on the record, both opened and read on 2026-09-03, and neither is § 243(d) or country-specific: State Department Expands Visa Bonds to Combat Illegal Overstay Rates (2026-03-18, https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/03/state-department-expands-visa-bonds-to-combat-illegal-overstay-rates/), extending a $15,000 B1/B2 bond to 50 countries from 2026-04-02; and State Department Revokes More Than 175,000 Visas (2026-08-10, https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/08/state-department-revokes-more-than-175000-visas/), reporting revocations for visa violations and criminal conduct. They are recorded here as the adjacent record rather than as Evidence: neither is imposed on a country for refusing to accept deportees, which is this Quote’s test, and the partial already rests on the two proclamations that are.

Action
restrict
Object
recalcitrant countries refusing deportees
ID
454