Washington ( CNN ) -- Venezuela 's consul general in Miami has been declared to be persona non grata and must leave the United States , a State Department spokesman said Sunday . Spokesman William Ostick declined to comment on specific details behind the decision to expel Livia Acosta Noguera , who has headed Venezuela 's consulate in Miami since March 2011 . The Venezuelan Embassy in Washington was informed of the decision Friday , Ostick said in a written statement , and the State Department said Acosta must depart the United States by Tuesday . It was unclear Sunday whether or not she was still in the United States . There was no immediate response from the Venezuelan government . Last month , a group of American lawmakers said they had `` grave concerns '' about Acosta and called for an investigation after the Spanish-language TV channel Univision aired a documentary alleging that she was among a group of Venezuelan and Iranian diplomats who expressed interest in an offer from a group of Mexican hackers to infiltrate the websites of the White House , the FBI , the Pentagon and U.S. nuclear plants . The evidence that the plot was real , according to Univision , are secret recordings with diplomats who ask questions about what the hackers can do and promise to send information to their governments . Univision interviewed a purported Mexican whistle-blower -- a student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico named Juan Carlos Munoz Ledo . The student told Univision he was recruited by a leftist professor who wanted to wage cyber attacks on the United States and its allies . Munoz told Univision he secretly recorded a meeting in 2008 with Acosta , who was then the cultural attache of the Venezuelan Embassy in Mexico . According to a recording Univision aired as part of its report , Acosta is heard saying that she can send the information gathered by the hackers straight to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez . Chavez has called the report `` lies . '' One of the Iranian diplomats told Univision that although he , indeed , was presented with a hacking plot by the Mexican group , he turned it down , in part because he thought they were CIA agents . In a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last month , Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen , David Rivera , Mario Diaz-Balart and Albio Sires asked the State Department to require Acosta 's `` immediate departure '' from the United States if the Univision report proved true . Ros-Lehtinen , who is chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee , cheered the decision to declare Acosta persona non grata on Sunday , but said the United States must do more to `` counter Iranian plots in the Western Hemisphere . '' Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is on a four-nation Latin American tour this week , a visit the Florida Republican said serves `` as a somber reminder that our enemies are welcomed by our undemocratic neighbors . '' `` We must strengthen our regional alliances to confront the onslaught of anti-democratic forces in Latin America whose goal is to undermine our nation , '' Ros-Lehtinen said . A State Department spokesman said last month that the United States did not know about the alleged plot , but that it found the Univision allegations `` very disturbing . '' However , `` we do n't have any information , at this point , to corroborate it , '' State Department spokesman Mark Toner said . CNN 's Rafael Fuenmayor , Jill Dougherty , Juan Carlos Lopez and Mariano Castillo contributed to this report .
NEW : Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen says the U.S. must do more to `` counter Iranian plots '' There was no immediate response from the Venezuelan government . U.S. State Department : Livia Acosta has been declared persona non grata . She has been Venezuela 's consul general in Miami since March 2011 .