The United States announced visa restrictions on 13 people linked to a US-sanctioned, India-based online pharmacy that the Trump administration accuses of selling Americans hundreds of thousands of counterfeit prescription pills laced with fentanyl.
The people targeted by the State Department on Tuesday were identified as being “close business associates of KS International Traders and its owner.”
The US Treasury sanctioned KS International and Mohammad Iqbal Shaikh, 34, in September. Shaikh was also among 19 people indicted in New York in the fall of 2024 on charges of selling counterfeit, fentanyl-laced pills to Americans over the Internet and via encrypted messaging platforms.
The targeting of KS International comes amid the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on drug smuggling. Among tactics employed was President Donald Trump’s December 2025 designation of illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals as weapons of mass destruction.
In June, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a new policy to impose visa restrictions on drug traffickers, their family members and close personal and business associates.
State Department spokesperson Thomas Pigott said Tuesday that the barring of entry to the 13 individuals “underscores the United States’ and India’s enduring and shared commitment to dismantling illicit drug entities and disrupting trafficking networks that harm Americans.”
“Those complicit in poisoning Americans will be denied entry to the United States,” he said in a statement.
The Trump administration has increasingly used visa restrictions across several policy areas, from punishing Haitian government officials and members of criminal organizations accused of obstructing the nation’s fight against terrorist gangs to Nicaraguan citizens believed to be facilitating irregular immigration into the United States. (UPI)
