After Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez condemned the U.S. attacks on Iran as a violation of international law, President Donald Trump did what he's done before with people who criticize his actions. He asked the secretary of the Department of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, to take care of it.
"In fact, I told Scott to cut off all dealings with Spain," Trump said in the Oval Office on March 3. "I could tomorrow stop, or today even better, stop everything having to do with Spain, all business having to do with Spain."
On March 12, Spain's foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, indicated that using the Treasury Department to attack Spain would make "no sense" and would affect the whole European Union.
But there is a way for the agency to target Spanish individuals and businesses, and Trump's Treasury Department has used it on other foreign leaders who have spoken out against the administration.
Since Trump began his second term, his administration has imposed — or rescinded — Treasury Department sanctions on foreigners in ways that have diverged from historical precedent or the sanction programs' intent, former State Department officials say.
The Treasury Department has historically used sanctions to restrict foreigners who pose serious threats to the U.S. and their own countries. The U.S. currently sanctions foreign entities under 37 official programs. Some of those programs allow the U.S. to block foreigners who have acted maliciously on behalf of a specific country, like North Korea or Russia. Other programs allow the federal government to restrict people from any foreign country, as long as they have committed or pose a serious risk of committing dangerous acts, like terrorism, drug trafficking or human rights abuse. Blocked people, companies, boats and planes are added to a list, called the "Specially Designated Nationals" list.
The sanctions are meant to protect Americans and bring about a positive change in behavior.
"When deployed effectively, these tools can disrupt weapons of mass destruction procurement rings, suffocate narcotics and criminal cartels, degrade the capabilities of terrorist groups, and alter the decision making of threatening regimes," Treasury Department documents reviewed by NPR state.
But under Trump, the agency has sanctioned people after they criticized the President or his political allies. The agency has also lifted sanctions it previously imposed on people accused of crimes and corruption, despite a lack of clear evidence of change in their behavior, former U.S. ambassadors said.
"It's supposed to operate independent of personal interests, and it's supposed to reinforce our strategic interests, not advance personal vendettas," said former U.S. ambassador to Hungary, David Pressman. "And so what you're seeing in this particular instance is different than what has happened before."
In 2025, Trump's Treasury Department repeatedly sanctioned prominent foreign officials after they ruled or spoke out against different types of military aggression from the U.S., Israel and Brazil.
In February, shortly after Trump took office, and after the International Criminal Court had issued arrest warrants in 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister for their roles in the war in Gaza, the Treasury Department started sanctioning some of the court's judges and prosecutors. By December, 11 staffers had been sanctioned. Except for two ICC staffers that Trump sanctioned during his first term in 2020, no other U.S. president has sanctioned ICC employees, Treasury Department data shows.
In July, the Treasury Department sanctioned U.N. human rights official Francesca Albanese. Albanese had been investigating human rights abuses in Palestinian territories and had started characterizing the Israeli aggression against Palestinians as a genocide.
Later that month, as Brazil's Supreme Federal Court considered whether former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump supporter, had attempted a coup with top military officials after he lost an election, the Treasury Department sanctioned the lead justice on the case.
"Alexandre de Moraes has taken it upon himself to be judge and jury in an unlawful witch hunt against U.S. and Brazilian citizens and companies," said Secretary Bessent in a press release published by the Treasury Department that announced the sanctions on the justice. "De Moraes is responsible for an oppressive campaign of censorship, arbitrary detentions that violate human rights, and politicized prosecutions — including against former President Jair Bolsonaro."
After the court decided Bolsonaro was guilty in September, the Treasury Department sanctioned De Moraes' wife.
The Treasury Department sanctioned the two Brazilians using Global Magnitsky Sanctions, a program that allows the U.S. to sanction foreigners who commit serious human rights abuse. It was named after Russian Sergei Magnitsky, who died in his government's custody after accusing Russian officials of corruption.
Democratic U.S. senators criticized the use of Magnitsky sanctions again De Moraes, citing a lack of evidence and saying the actions undermined America's global standing.
"These actions fly in the face of the spirit and purpose of the Global Magnitsky Act, and send a signal that America's commitment to fighting corruption hinges on political winds," wrote Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) in a joint statement.
Then, on Oct. 24, the Treasury Department sanctioned Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia. That was one month after Petro said in the 2025 U.N. General Assembly that the U.S. had violated international law by executing people on boats in the Caribbean sea, and days after Petro reiterated on X, in Spanish, that a U.S. attack on a Colombian fisherman was "murder."
The consequences for sanctioned foreigners can be severe. Their assets within U.S. jurisdiction are frozen and they are restricted from entering the U.S. and from using U.S. financial services. No U.S. companies are allowed to deal with them.
Some of those sanctioned by the U.S. have pushed back against their new restrictions.
"These sanctions are a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution which operates pursuant to the mandate conferred by its States Parties from across regions," the ICC stated in a press release, following the most recent sanctions to its members in December. "When judicial actors are threatened for applying the law, it is the international legal order itself that is placed at risk."
After the Treasury Department stated that the agency sanctioned Petro for engaging in "international proliferation of illicit drugs or their means of production," Petro said on X that the Treasury Department's statement was a lie. Under his leadership, Colombia had seized more cocaine than any other government, he said, in Spanish. Petro described the imposition of the sanction as an "arbitrary act typical of an oppressive regime."
"The whole scenario is quite mad, in my view," said Richard Nephew, a former anti-corruption coordinator at the State Department. "So, it is hard to imagine a comparative situation and it is pretty obvious — to me — that this is political retribution rather than a serious use of sanctions tools for behavior modification purposes."
Albanese, the U.N. human rights official, responded to her sanctions with a lawsuit filed by her family on Feb. 26, 2026. It argued that Trump, Bessent and others in the administration had prevented her from accessing her property in the United States and violated her First, Fourth and Fifth amendment rights as well as the sanctions rules themselves.
In December, the U.S. lifted sanctions on the Brazilian justice and his wife. The ICC members, Petro and Albanese remain on the list. Asked for comment, Treasury Department spokeswoman Gigi O'Connell declined.
Previously sanctioned, now meeting at the White House
Historically, sanctions have been imposed following extensive research, former Treasury Department officials said.
"The facts that are being used for the basis of designation, those had to be irreproachable," said former Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, who led the Treasury Department under the Obama administration, from 2013 to 2017.
But the sanctions are not meant to last forever. The agency allows people to demonstrate they have improved their behavior by filing a petition. If that petition is successful, the sanctions can be lifted.
"A lot of times the argument will be like, look, the circumstances have changed, but to address any ongoing concerns that the U.S. government might have, I'm going to commit to providing audited financials for the next five years, or donating an amount to charity or divesting from an asset," said Erich Ferrari, a lawyer who has helped people remove themselves from the sanctions list for more than a decade. "All these different things you can say to kind of address the underlying concerns that led to the sanctions in the first place."
But in some instances last year, Trump's Treasury Department removed sanctions against people who U.S. ambassadors and senators did not believe had addressed the agency's initial concerns.
On Jan. 7, 2025, under the Biden administration, the U.S. sanctioned Antal Rogán, the head of the Hungarian cabinet, for his involvement in the country's system of political corruption. Three months later, in April, Rogán's sanctions were removed.
Pressman, the former ambassador to Hungary, speculated that Rogán's sanctions were removed because of the "perceived personal loyalty" of Trump and Hungary's Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, who Trump endorsed for reelection in February.
'With friends, everything is easier," Orbán wrote on X, while posting a video of Trump's endorsement, which happened at the inaugural meeting of his Board of Peace, of which Orbán is a member.
"The challenges in Hungary remain," said Pressman. "And the delisting in this case of Antal Rogán had nothing to do with changed behavior."
Something similar happened months later when the Treasury Department removed sanctions on Horacio Cartes, the former President of Paraguay, in October 2025.
In 2023, the Treasury Department had accused Cartes of collecting bribes through representatives during private events held by the Iran-backed terrorist group, Hezbollah. Cartes was also involved in "rampant corruption," the agency stated, including allegedly using $1 million of his personal funds to buy the votes of legislators to push for a constitutional reform that would have allowed him to run for a second term.
Cartes had not demonstrated a clear change in that sort of behavior when he was delisted, said Marc Ostfield, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay from 2022 to 2025.
"The U.S. says that links to Hezbollah are a grave concern of this current administration," said Ostfield. "So it's really hard to understand why the U.S. would lift sanctions on Cartes."
One person removed from the Treasury Department's sanctions list has already used his renewed access to the U.S. for a meeting with a member of the Trump administration.
When, in October 2025, the U.S. removed sanctions on Milorad Dodik, the former President of the Republika Srpska who was previously sanctioned for "undermin[ing] the stability of the Western Balkans region through corruption and threats to long-standing peace agreements," some U.S. politicians said.
"Dodik has undermined the Dayton Peace Agreement, cozied up to Putin, and profited from corruption — hardly grounds for relief," said Sen. Shaheen, the New Hampshire Democrat. "The American people deserve answers."
But on Feb. 6, 2026, Dodik posted three photos on X of him and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt inside the White House.
We had a very constructive meeting at the White House with Karoline Leavitt @PressSec , Press Secretary to President Donald Trump.
— Милорад Додик (@MiloradDodik) February 6, 2026
President Trump’s @realDonaldTrump policy — grounded in non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, a clear departure from… pic.twitter.com/MU6GLpY2js
NPR asked the White House to explain why Dodik's sanctions were removed and why Leavitt met with Dodik in February. A representative for the White House declined to respond by email.
Pressman said the recent examples conflict with the purpose of the sanctions programs.
"This authority is being utilized in ways to augment the power of an individual rather than advance our country's interests," said Pressman, adding it is "rewarding loyalists and punishing those who are perceived to be opponents."
NPR would like to hear from people with information about foreigners whose sanctions were removed last year. You can send an email to the reporter of this article at ceisner@npr.org, or contact her on the end-to-end encrypted platform Signal here. Her username is: ceis.78.
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