Trump administration slaps hefty visa 'bonds' on travelers from Nicaragua and Grenada

Syra Ortiz Blanes and Jacqueline Charles, Miami Herald on Mar 18, 2026

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Travelers from two more countries in the Western Hemisphere will be required to pay steep fees to come to the United States after being added to the State Department’s ‘visa bond’ program, the agency announced on Wednesday.

Citizens from Grenada, the eastern Caribbean island, and Nicaragua are now among the foreign nationals in 50 countries that will need to pay between $5,000 and $15,000 to the U.S. government before being issued “B1/B2” visas for tourism and business purposes. The new measure takes effect April 2.

The Trump administration says that it identified the countries on the list as having high overstay rates, meaning that their nationals tend to stay in the United States after their visas have expired. The visa bond pilot program was launched last fall, and runs through August 2026.

Along with Nicaragua and Grenada, other countries that will now be subject to the program include Cambodia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Lesotho, Mauritius, Mongolia, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea, Seychelles and Tunisia.

Sixty percent of the countries on the expanded list are in Africa. But Antigua and Barbuda, Cuba, Dominica,and Venezuela, all nations located in Latin America and the Caribbean, had been previously added in January.

In its announcement Wednesday, the State Department touted the program as already effective in deterring overstays, saying that 97% of bonded travelers had left the U.S. before their visas ran out. The State Department of State said it made the decisions on what countries to include on the list based on Homeland Security’s overstay report.

Grenada had an overstay rate of 1.77% and Nicaragua had a total B1/B2 overstay rate of 1.71% in 2024, according to the document. Other countries, like Niger and Sri Lanka, have a higher overstay rates of 13.41% and 2.44% respectively. However, they are not subject to the visa bond — raising questions about the State Department’s methodology.

The inclusion of Grenada comes after the Trump administration had already added two other eastern Caribbean countries to the list following a partial travel ban. Antigua and Barbuda and Dominica were singled out earlier this year over their Citizenship by Investment programs, which allow foreigners to get citizenship if they make sizable investments.

Grenada has a similar program. The country was approached by the Trump administration to allow it to place radar equipment on the premises of its airport as the U.S. carried out boat strikes in the southern Caribbean. The request created a stir in the country for a number of reasons, among them that the airport was built with assistance from the Cuban government.

Federal guidelines say that the size of the bond will be set at the time of the interview with the person seeking the visa. However, paying a bond does not guarantee getting a visa. The money is returned if people leave before their visa expires, if they don’t travel to the U.S., or if they are denied admission at Customs. The government does not return the money if the person stays in the U.S. or leaves the country after their visa has expired. The money does not get returned if the person applies for asylum or a family-based green card.

Many of the countries have also been subject to visa application processing freezes, travel bans, and visa restrictions under the Trump administration. Countries subject to more than one of the policies include Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela and Antigua and Barbuda. Experts have told the Herald that the overlapping, seemingly redundant policies are designed to enmesh people in bureaucratic hurdles so they are deterred from legally visiting or permanently immigrating to the United States.

“The administration has clearly identified countries that they deem to be undesirable, and they are targeting very intentionally and carving their citizens out of our immigration system,” Jorge Loweree, managing director of Programs and Strategy at the American Immigration Council, told the Herald when the visa bond program was expanded in January.

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