These 43 countries are likely to be part of Trump’s new travel ban

medium119034620The Trump administration is considering targeting the citizens of as many as 43 countries as part of a new ban on travel to the US that would be broader than the restrictions imposed during President Donald Trump’s first term, according to officials familiar with the matter.A draft list of recommendations developed by diplomatic and security officials suggests a “red” list of 11 countries whose citizens would be flatly barred from entering the US. They are Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen, the officials said.The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal deliberations, cautioned that the list had been developed by the State Department several weeks ago and that changes were likely by the time it reached the White House.Officials at embassies and in regional bureaus at the State Department, and security specialists at other departments and intelligence agencies, have been reviewing the draft. They are providing comments about whether descriptions of deficiencies in particular countries are accurate or whether there are policy reasons — like not risking disruption to cooperation on some other priority — to reconsider including some.The draft proposal also included an “orange” list of 10 countries for which travel would be restricted but not cut off. In those cases, affluent business travellers might be allowed to enter, but not people travelling on immigrant or tourist visas.Citizens on that list would also be subjected to mandatory in-person interviews in order to receive a visa. It included Belarus, Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Turkmenistan.When he took office on January 20, Trump issued an executive order requiring the State Department to identify countries “for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries”. medium119034662He gave the department 60 days to finish a report for the White House with that list, meaning it is due next week. The State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs has taken the lead, and the order said the Justice and Homeland Security Departments and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence were to assist with the effort.Spokespeople at several agencies declined to comment or did not respond to a request for comment. But the State Department previously said it was following Trump’s order and was “committed to protecting our nation and its citizens by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process”, while declining to specifically discuss internal deliberations.The New York Times and other news outlets reported this month that Afghanistan, which was not part of Trump’s first-term travel bans but fell to the Taliban when the US withdrew its forces in 2021, was likely to be part of the second-term ban. But the other countries under consideration had been unclear.It is also not clear whether people with existing visas would be exempted from the ban, or if their visas would be cancelled. Nor is it clear whether the administration intends to exempt existing green card holders, who are already approved for lawful permanent residency.The Trump administration this past week said it had cancelled the green card of a Syrian-born former Columbia University graduate student of Palestinian descent, Mahmoud Khalil, because he had led high-profile campus protests against Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip that the government says were antisemitic, setting off a court fight over the legality of that move.Some of the countries on the draft red and orange lists were sanctioned by Trump in his first-term travel bans, but many are new. Some share characteristics with the earlier lists — they are generally Muslim-majority or otherwise non-white, poor and have governments that are considered weak or corrupt.But the reason several others were included was not immediately clear. Bhutan, for example, was proposed for an absolute ban on entry. The small Buddhist and Hindu country is sandwiched between China and India, neither of which were on any of the draft lists.The proposal to sharply restrict, if not outright ban, visitors from Russia raises a different issue. While the Russian government has a reputation for corruption, Trump has been trying to reorient US foreign policy in a more Russia-friendly direction. medium nocaptionhttp://youtu.be/wujd2o1pHXI?si=56DMmgoV-TrNTBfPA decision to include Venezuela could also disrupt a nascent thaw in relations that has been useful to Trump’s separate efforts to deport migrants in the US without legal permission.The proposal also includes a draft “yellow” list of 22 countries that would be given 60 days to clear up perceived deficiencies, with the threat of being moved onto one of the other lists if they did not comply.Such issues could include failing to share with the US information about incoming travellers, purportedly inadequate security practices for issuing passports, or the selling of citizenship to people from banned countries, which could serve as a loophole around the restrictions.That list, the officials said, included Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Congo, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Vanuatu and Zimbabwe.During Trump’s first term, courts blocked the government from enforcing the first two versions of his travel ban, but the Supreme Court eventually permitted a rewritten ban — one that banned citizens from eight nations, six of them predominantly Muslim — to take effect. The list later evolved.Soon after he became president in January 2021, Joe Biden issued a proclamation revoking Trump’s travel bans, calling them “a stain on our national conscience” and “inconsistent with our long history of welcoming people of all faiths and no faith at all”.Trump’s executive order in January said he would revive the bans in order to protect American citizens “from aliens who intend to commit terrorist attacks, threaten our national security, espouse hateful ideology or otherwise exploit the immigration laws for malevolent purposes”.