(Dec 3): The Trump administration is expected to expand its travel ban to include around 30 countries, a bid to more aggressively curtail migration to the US following last week’s shooting of two National Guard members in Washington.
A list of the countries being added to the ban is expected to come soon, according to a Department of Homeland Security official. The administration already has in place a full block on travellers from 12 countries, with partial restrictions on seven others.
Meanwhile, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said Tuesday that it would pause all immigration requests from those hailing from the 19 countries already restricted, such as applications for green cards.
The US will also launch a “comprehensive re-review” of approvals granted to people from those nations who entered the US on or after the start of the Biden administration, USCIS said in a policy memorandum.
US President Donald Trump has threatened a number of actions to restrict migration to the US, following the attack in Washington which killed one Guard member and left another in critical condition. Federal authorities have identified the suspect as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, an Afghan national who worked with US forces and the CIA in Afghanistan before arriving in the US in 2021.
Trump and allies have seized on the case, blaming the prior administration of Joe Biden for letting Lakanwal into the country and pushing for more curbs on migrants. In the days after the shooting, Trump outlined steps his administration planned to take, including halting admissions from certain developing nations, revoking citizenship for some naturalised migrants, and ending federal benefits for non-citizens.
See also: Trump calls for ‘reverse migration’, outlines sweeping crackdown
While the scope of many of those efforts and how the administration would implement them remain unclear, an expansion of the travel ban — one of the most controversial Trump policies dating back to his first term — would offer one of the most concrete steps yet from the president to follow through on his pledge to stem the flow of legal migration.
Trump’s first-term efforts to ban travellers from certain countries underwent numerous iterations and a prolonged court fight before being ultimately upheld by the US Supreme Court as “squarely within the scope of Presidential authority”. Trump reinstated his travel ban earlier this year.
The plans for an expanded travel ban were first reported by CBS News.
See also: Trump says one National Guard member in DC shooting has died
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Monday that she met with Trump to recommend that he expand the travel ban that is in place, but she did not elaborate on how many countries would be affected.
“I just met with the President. I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,” she said in a post on X.
The countries currently facing a full ban include Afghanistan, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, with partial bans on travellers from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
All 19 of those nations are covered by the immigration application pause outlined Tuesday. The latest USCIS memo directly cites the Lakanwal case.
USCIS last week issued guidance to consider among “significant negative factors” a country’s inclusion on the president’s travel ban, while the State Department has announced all visa issuances to Afghan nationals applying with Afghan passports are paused until further notice, including Afghan Special Immigrant Visas.
Trump last week in a post on social media said he would move to “permanently” pause migration from “all Third World Countries”. But the president has been taking steps to overhaul US immigration policy well before the National Guard shooting, including dramatically lowering the refugee cap, ending temporary protected status for migrants from numerous countries, imposing a US$100,000 application fee for H-1B visas used for high-skilled workers, and revoking thousands of visas.
USCIS earlier paused some green card applications, as it looked to intensify its scrutiny of potential permanent residents.
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