The State Department denied a temporary visa to a Guatemalan father trying to attend the funeral on Saturday for his teenage daughter, who was kidnapped outside her North Carolina home last month and was later found dead off a rural road, the man’s lawyer said on Thursday.

The father of the girl, 13-year-old Hania Aguilar, traveled to the United States Embassy in Guatemala City on Monday and asked for expedited approval for a visa to fly to the United States. The father, Noé Aguilar, was denied on the spot because American officials worried he lacked strong ties to Guatemala, his native country, 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. Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, wrote a letter asking for the State Department to reconsider the father’s application, Ms. Salem said, and the office of Representative Mark Meadows, a Republican, intervened as well.