Trump Expands Travel Ban

The Trump administration announced Tuesday it was expanding travel restrictions to an additional 20 countries and the Palestinian Authority, doubling the number of nations affected by sweeping limits announced earlier this year on who can travel and emigrate to the US. The Trump administration included five more countries as well as people traveling on documents issued by the Palestinian Authority to the list of countries facing a full ban on travel to the US and imposed new limits on 15 other countries, the AP reports.

• In June, President Trump announced that citizens of 12 countries would be banned from coming to the United States and those from seven others would face restrictions. The decision resurrected a hallmark policy of his first term. At the time the ban included Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen and heightened restrictions on visitors from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.
• On Tuesday, the administration announced it was expanding the list of countries whose citizens are banned from entering the US to Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan, and Syria. The administration also fully restricted travel on people with Palestinian-Authority-issued travel documents, the latest U.S. travel restriction against Palestinians. South Sudan was also already facing significant travel restrictions.
• An additional 15 countries are also being added to the list of countries facing partial restrictions: Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Ivory Coast, Dominica, Gabon, Gambia, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Tonga, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The restrictions apply to both people seeking to travel to the US as visitors or to emigrate to the US.

• The Trump administration said in its announcement that many of the countries from which it was restricting travel had "widespread corruption, fraudulent or unreliable civil documents and criminal records" that made it difficult to vet their citizens for travel to the US. It also said some countries had high rates of people overstaying their visas, refused to take back their citizens who the US wished to deport or had a "general lack of stability and government control," which made vetting difficult.
• The news of the expanding travel ban is likely to face fierce opposition from critics who have argued that the administration is using national security concerns to collectively keep out people from a wide range of countries. "This expanded ban is not about national security but instead is another shameful attempt to demonize people simply for where they are from," said Laurie Ball Cooper, Vice President of US Legal Programs at the International Refugee Assistance Project.

• The Trump administration also upgraded restrictions on some countries—Laos and Sierra Leone—that previously were on the partially restricted list and in one case—Turkmenistan—said the country had improved enough to warrant easing some restrictions on travelers from that country. Everything else from the previous travel restrictions announced in June remains in place, the administration said.