Nobel-winning ex-president of Costa Rica loses US visa
The former president said he was notified via email on Tuesday morning of the cancellation of his tourist and business visa.
Former Costa Rica's President and 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias speaks during a press conference in San Jose, Costa Rica on April 1, 2025. (AFP)
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Former Costa Rican president and Nobel Peace laureate, Oscar Arias, said he was stripped of his US visa, prompting him to brand the country under Donald Trump an autocracy.
The two-time president won the Nobel in 1987 for his efforts to end civil wars in Central America.
The former president said he was notified via email on Tuesday morning of the cancellation of his tourist and business visa.
The reason was not fully clear, but Arias has been an outspoken critic of Trump's migrant deportation policies and tariff wars.
He has also criticized the current Costa Rican president, Rodrigo Chaves, who has close ties with the Trump administration and whom Arias accuses of taking orders from Washington.
The Trump administration also canceled visas for several Costa Rican lawmakers, according to local media.
Arias is not the first former Central American president to be stripped of a US visa, but most others faced legal issues related to corruption in their countries.
Arias, 84, decried the decision saying: "The United States is a paradigm of democracy, or it has been. Today it has characteristics of autocracy".