₦airaland Forum

Addressing what it calls “a clear national security threat,” the Trump administration will require that some foreign visitors pay bonds of up to $15,000 to help ensure they do not overstay their visas, under a State Department trial program announced on Monday.

Foreigners seeking to enter the United States on tourist or business visas from countries with high visa overstay rates will be expected to put down no less than $5,000, the department said in a public notice. Visitors who fail to leave the United States before their visa expires will forfeit their bond; those who comply with their visa requirements will get their money back.

The notice did not specify which countries would be subject to the program, saying only that they would be determined based on visa overstay data collected and published by the Department of Homeland Security.

The move is the Trump administration’s latest in a multifront effort to crack down on illegal immigration after President Trump made the issue the centerpiece of his 2024 campaign.

A notice in the Federal Register announcing the new rule called it “a key pillar of the Trump administration’s foreign policy to protect the United States from the clear national security threat posed by visa overstays and deficient screening and vetting.”

Citing Department of Homeland Security data from 2023, the notice said that more than 500,000 people admitted to the United States through air or sea ports of entry most likely remained in the country past the end of their authorized stay.

Visitors who are made to deposit bonds will be required to arrive and depart the United States from airports chosen to participate in the program, which the State Department said it would announce 15 days before the bonds were put in place.

The 12-month pilot program will also apply to foreign nationals from countries where “screening and vetting information is deemed deficient,” according to the notice, as well as people granted citizenship on the basis of promised investments or without a residency requirement.

Consular officers granting visas will determine the amount of the bond, according to the notice.

The program is meant to test the department’s past assumption that bond payments are “too cumbersome to be practical,” as the notice put it.

Consular officers already have the authority to impose bonds on visa applicants, the notice said, but noted that the State Department’s official Foreign Affairs Manual declared that “such bonds will rarely, if ever, be used.” It called practical considerations “untested.”

The State Department planned to test a similar program late in the first Trump administration but did not carry it out after foreign travel ground to a virtual halt because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The online notice is scheduled to be published in the print edition of the Federal Register on Tuesday, and will go into effect 15 days later, on Aug. 20.

malali:

Time to fix our own roof before the storm floods us.
Or watch the next generation inherit the rot.

Elmojiid:
Other countries dey...there is always an option, no be only USA

Gotocourt:
Southerners, see una hand work. Abusing every working system

malali:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/us/politics/state-department-bonds-visas.html

free2ryhme:
Trump wan choke everybody just to push his MAGA agenda 😂😂😂

Gotocourt:
Southerners, see una hand work. Abusing every working system

papaa4:
Abeg na after paying d 15k$ are dey going to give me interest on d money

malali:
He is only doing what he promised.
They are aware that people are deserting their mismanaged countries to come to the US.

Chubhie:
Nigerians never see anything. Fix your shithole country! It's a death match now. You either fight and take back your country or die on your knees begging for food. You will as always be presented with choices by the universe.

RaptorX:
Why would anyone pay $15k just to visit America, if you overstay your money is gone and will be living like an illegal doing all kind of nonsense job to survive, just to say you are in America.

lexy2014:
which of al that you said have you done?

or are you not a nigerian?