Guatemalan father of girl who was kidnapped and killed in US denied visa for her funeral, lawyer says

US officials were worried he might not return to native country, according to immigration lawyer

Hania Noelia Aguilar was kidnapped outside her North Carolina home in November and her body was found off a rural road following a three-week search (AP)

A Guatemalan father trying to attend the funeral of his teenage daughter who was kidnapped outside her home in North Carolina and later found dead near a road has been denied a temporary visa, according to his lawyer.

Noé Aguilar, the father of 13-year-old Hania Aguilar, travelled to the US embassy in Guatemala City on Monday and asked for expedited approval for a visa to fly to the United States.

But he was denied on the spot because US officials worried he lacked strong ties to Guatemala and might not return, according to his lawyer Naimeh Salem.

“To tell you the truth, with past administrations, we never had a problem like this,” Ms Salem, an immigration lawyer based in Texas, said in an interview.

“With this administration, most everything that is discretionary is getting denied.”

As the news of Mr Aguilar’s denial was reported on Thursday in North Carolina, some high-ranking state politicians pledged to help.

Democrat governor Roy Cooper wrote a letter asking for the State Department to reconsider the father’s application and the office of Republican representative Mark Meadows intervened as well.

“I’m hopeful we should be able to get it,” Ms Salem said.

In his letter, Mr Cooper asked the US ambassador to Guatemala to reconsider the visa applications for Mr Aguilar.

He wrote that other relatives of Hania Aguilar who live there, including a grandfather and an aunt, had applied for a visa, and some of them were also rejected.

“As you can image, the family is devastated by the loss of such a promising young lady who loved her family, friends and was one of the top students in her class,” Mr Cooper wrote on Thursday.

“I urge you to reconsider those decisions and to grant visas to those individuals so that they can properly mourn their lost child in this tragic and extraordinary circumstance.”

Mr Meadows’ office did not respond to a message seeking comment. A State Department spokesperson, Nicole Thompson, said she could not comment on specific visa cases.

“The Department of State makes every effort to facilitate legitimate travel by international visitors,” the spokesperson said.

“We are also fully committed to administering US immigration law and ensuring the integrity and security of our country’s borders.”

Residents of Guatemala must receive a visa to travel to the US.

Ms Aguilar was kidnapped on the morning of 5 November outside her mother’s house in a mobile home park in Lumberton, North Carolina.

Witnesses said they saw a man wearing dark clothes and a yellow bandanna force Ms Aguilar into an SUV, the police said.

The search for Ms Aguilar dominated the news across the state and the South, as the FBI joined the case and coordinated a vast search over several weeks.

The authorities had few clues. They released surveillance footage from a camera showing the SUV and asked the public to look out for shoes similar to the ones Ms Aguilar was last seen wearing - black-and-white Adidas sneakers with a colourful logo on the heel.

After nearly three-weeks of searching, the police found Ms Aguilar’s body off a rural road about 7 miles south of Lumberton, authorities said.

The FBI declined to elaborate about why the area had been searched but said agents were following up on “investigative leads”.

A spokeswoman at the FBI, which prominently displays information about the case on its website, said on Thursday the case remained unsolved.

In his visa application, Mr Aguilar stated he owned a business in Guatemala and had no intentions of staying in the US after the funeral, Ms Salem said.

But embassy officials denied his request because he had a low bank balance, she said.

“He has no negative immigration history,” Ms Salem said. “No deportation.”

Mr Aguilar lived in the US when his daughter was an infant but moved back to Guatemala around 2005, she said.

While Donald Trump has largely, and loudly, focused his immigration policy on the border, his administration has quietly reshaped the country’s legal flow of foreigners. This includes those seeking to travel, work or study in the US.

Work visas are being denied or delayed at high rates and colleges have worried about attracting international students who need visas.

Foreigners in the US have found it more difficult to extend their stays.

Ms Salem said she had worked on numerous similar requests in past years for family members who wanted to visit a sick relative or attend a funeral in the US. She said she could not think of another case with similar circumstances that had been denied.

“He has never attempted to come back to the US,” she said. “He has no desire to come to the US. He wanted to kiss his daughter goodbye.”

New York TImes