U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau this week published a series of humorous images on social media in which he declares himself “The Visa Snatcher,” an apparent superhero alter ego that keeps foreign dictatorship elites out of the United States.
Landau is in particular addressing and investigating public denunciations of Maduro regime individuals holding U.S. visas.
In recent days, several users of the X social media platform (formerly Twitter) issued public posts denouncing either relatives of top officials of the Venezuelan socialist regime or individuals linked to the regime officials who are allegedly living in the United States or have some type of U.S. visa that allows them to visit or conduct businesses in America.
Deputy State Sec. Landau has personally responded to some of the users’ posts with a picture of himself sitting on a desk that features a plate that reads “El Quitavisas” in Spanish, which translates to “The Visa Snatcher.”
Landau, who personally said that The Visa Snatcher is “more feared than the chupacabra itself,” first published the picture on Saturday evening responding to Venezuelan national Cesar Moya, who denounced that a man identified as Alfredo Puglia and his son Alejandro are frontmen for Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López, who is actively wanted by U.S. authorities on drug trafficking charges.
According to Moya, the two individuals “have been accumulating luxury properties that generate income in New York and Miami” for the past two years and, “as a result, Alejandro Puglia has an investor visa and lives like a king in New York.”
Padrino López, who the Puglias allegedly work for, stands accused alongside socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro and others of leading the Cartel of the Suns, a U.S.-identified Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) that, for years, has sought to “flood” the U.S. with cocaine to harm its people. In 2019, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia indicted Padrino López for conspiring with others to distribute cocaine on board an aircraft registered in the United States between 2014 and 2019. The U.S. has an active $15 million bounty on information that can lead to Padrino López’s arrest and/or conviction.
Moya’s public denunciation holds notable mention, as Padrino López’s daughter Yarazetd Padrino will soon marry a man identified as Daniel Puglia. The Venezuelan Defense Minister initially planned to host a lavish $300,000 wedding for his daughter in October at Canaima National Park, declared as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1994.
Following a widespread condemnation campaign by outraged Venezuelans, the wedding ceremony was reportedly relocated to Fuerte Tiuna, a large military complex in Caracas of high importance for the Maduro regime. Reports indicate that it also houses Nicolás Maduro’s personal bunker, among other important facilities of the rogue regime.
At the time, Deputy State Sec. Landau criticized the lavish wedding plans and said, “as Orwell recognized, socialism always ends up the same: ‘We are all equal, but some are more equal than others.’”
Landau published the same “Visa Snatcher” picture in response to a report from the Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional denouncing Alfredo Puglia’s businesses in the United States and his relation with the wanted Venezuelan Defense Minister.
Since the initial “Visa Snatcher” post on his official account, Deputy State Sec. Landau has also resused the same picture several times in response to other users denouncing the presence of Maduro regime-linked individuals in the United States, as well as people who allegedly receive financing from the Venezuelan regime to serve as “propagandists.”
On Monday, the outlet UNH Plus published a post citing a report from Diario las Américas claiming that Spain’s socialist former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero — a longtime ally and meditator of Maduro — is “conspiring” with Venezuelan regime officials to “sacrifice” Maduro and establish a “neo-Chavista” transition that preserves the Cartel of the Suns’s power.
Landau responded to the post by asking, “Is this the signal for The Visa Snatcher?” Landau accompanied the text with a meme of Batman’s iconic Bat-Signal that reads “Visa Snatcher.”
Breitbart News reached out to the U.S. State Department and asked if Deputy Sec. Landau’s posts mean that the State Department is looking into the matter of Maduro regime-linked individuals or their relatives who may be presently living in the United States.
“Deputy Secretary Landau prefers to be referred to in English as ‘The Visa Snatcher.’ This Administration does not believe that the United States should grant visas to persons whose presence in our country does not align with U.S. national security interests,” a State Department spokesperson told Breitbart News.
Although the State Department has not publicly disclosed if the U.S. visas to the alleged Maduro regime-linked individuals have been revoked at press time, Deputy State Sec. Landau announced in June that he had personally ordered to cancel any U.S. visa issued to Mexican leftist councilwoman Melissa Cornejo who, in a now-deleted Twitter post, reportedly cheered for the anti-ICE protests that took place in Los Angeles on that month — adding, “shove my visa up your ass.”
“I can’t put your visa in there, but I can tell you that I personally gave the order to cancel it after seeing this vulgar post. And you shouldn’t be surprised by their response: that you don’t even have a valid visa to cancel,” Landau wrote at the time. “It’s easy to talk about your contempt for “my visa” on social media when you don’t have one. Those who glorify violence and defy legitimate authorities and public order (“FU** ICE”) are in no way welcome in our country.”
Reports published in August indicated that the U.S. State Department had so far revoked over 6,000 student visas issued to individuals who supported terrorism. Among the thousands of cases, some of the individuals committed felonies such as assault and DUIs while in U.S. territory or openly expressed support of terrorist organizations such as the jihadist group Hamas.
The revocation of thousands of U.S. visas issued to students goes in line with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s policies to revoke visas to individuals linked to authoritarian regimes, such as those issued to individuals linked to Mais Medicos (“More Doctors”), a Brazilian government program that largely relies on the use of the Cuban communist regime’s slave doctor program.
Last week, Rubio announced that the State Department imposed visa restrictions on Central American nationals acting on behalf of the interests of the Chinese Communist Party to spread China’s corrupt influence in the region.
“These actions reaffirm President Trump’s commitment to protect America’s economic prosperity and national security interests in our region. We continue to promote accountability for Central American nationals who intentionally work with the CCP in Central America and destabilize our hemisphere,” Rubio said.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here
Read the full article here
