Reports show a new travel ban on the horizon with slightly different iterations, according to media reports.
Reuters reported on Monday that a forthcoming travel ban would affect citizens from 41 countries, according to an internal memo they had seen and sources they had spoken to who were close to the issue.
The list is made up of three different categories: countries that are banned outright, countries with sharply restricted travel to the US, and countries that have sixty days to address concerns.
Reuters identified Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Cuba, and North Korea as five of the 10 countries where citizens would be subject to a full visa suspension. According to an article in the The New York Times last week, the full list includes Afghanistan; Bhutan; Cuba; Iran; Libya; North Korea; Somalia; Sudan; Syria; Yemen; and Venezuela.
Seven of these countries – which were on different iterations of Trump’s 2017 predominantly “Muslim travel ban” list – continue to remain on the banned list. These countries include: Iran; Libya; North Korea; Somalia; Sudan; Syria; Yemen and Venezuela.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on
Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
In the second group, Reuters listed Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar and South Sudan as five countries that would face partial suspensions. Such suspensions would impact tourist and student visas as well as other immigrant visas. Citizens who would also be on that list would face mandatory in-person interviews to receive visas.
Reuters said a total of 26 countries feature in a third group that would have sixty days to address concerns, or they could be subject to a partial suspension. Such countries include Belarus, Pakistan and Turkmenistan, among others. The New York Times had Pakistan in the second group for partial suspensions.
The lists have been developed in response to an executive order issued on 20 January by Trump giving the State Department 60 days 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” to “protect its 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”.
A full report and a final list of countries are expected this week.
Original travel bans
Trump invited outrage when he issued a “Muslim” travel ban within a week of taking office during his first term in January 2017. The countries on his original list were seven Muslim-majority countries: Iran; Iraq; Libya; Somalia; Sudan; Syria; and Yemen. The order also indefinitely suspended the entry of Syrian refugees.
This order affected individuals regardless of their immigration status, including green card holders and those with employment-based visas. Travellers with valid visas and permanent residency were denied entry.
Following large-scale protests and chaos at airports, courts pushed back on the ban, leading to the first ban being blocked by a temporary restraining order in Washington v Trump in February 2017.
Three more iterations of the ban followed, leading to numerous lawsuits filed in federal court against the Trump administration. One of the most successful lawsuits was Trump v Hawaii, a lawsuit on behalf of the state of Hawaii, where the Muslim Association of Hawaii, Dr Ismail Elshikh, and two John Doe plaintiffs challenged the various iterations of the ban.
After Trump issued the second iteration of the ban in March 2017 – banning people from Iran; Libya; North Korea; Syria; Venezuela; Yemen; and Somalia – the Hawaii district court issued a nationwide injunction against the second version of the ban which was affirmed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on 12 June 2017.
The court prohibited the government from enforcing the ban against foreign nationals who possess a “bona fide relationship” with a person or entity in the US.
But the government interpreted that ruling narrowly, issuing new guidance that would still ban “grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, fiancés, and any other ‘extended’ family members” on the theory that they are not “close” family.
In July 2017, the Hawaii district court ruled that this definition “represents the antithesis of common sense” and prevented the government from enforcing it. After a government appeal, the Ninth Circuit largely left the district court’s order relating to travel in place, while staying part of the order relating to refugees.
Trump issued a third iteration of the ban in September 2017, and the lawsuit returned to Hawaii district court. The court ruled that it violated the Immigration and Nationality Act and enjoined enforcement of core portions of the ban. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, but the Supreme Court permitted Muslim Ban 3.0 to go into effect as appeals progressed.
In January 2018, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and it was heard on 25 April 2018, and its opinion released on 26 June 2018.
The Court reversed the grant of a preliminary injunction after a five to four decision. In doing so, it rejected both statutory and constitutional challenges to the ban.
Despite the litany of evidence that the ban was unconstitutionally motivated by anti-Muslim animus, the majority said it “[could] reasonably be understood to result from a justification independent of unconstitutional grounds”, accepting at face value the government’s contention that the policy came after a neutral worldwide review of countries’ capacities to support the vetting of their nationals.
The third iteration of the ban imposed full visa restrictions on citizens from eight nations, six of them predominantly Muslim. These countries included Chad; Iran; Libya; North Korea; Syria; Venezuela; Yemen; and Somalia.
Iranian nationals were allowed to enter “under valid student (F and M) and exchange visitor (J), although such individuals were “subject to enhanced screening and vetting requirements”.
In April 2018, the administration removed travel restrictions on Chad.
In January 2020, a fourth travel ban was instituted and included additional countries such as Eritrea; Kyrgyzstan; Myanmar; Nigeria; Sudan; and Tanzania, which restricted applications to immigrants from those countries but did not restrict entry by non-immigrants.
Dangers for legal migrants
Many have voiced concerns that the new travel ban could impact green card holders from banned countries in the same way it was first instituted in January 2017, when green card holders were prevented from entering the country.
Immigration lawyers are warning green card holders from countries facing a ban to delay travelling outside the US until policies are confirmed.
On his first day in office in January 2025, Trump laid out a blueprint that would enable him to deport any foreign national who has expressed pro-Palestinian sentiments or participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations in an executive order entitled, “Protecting the United States from foreign terrorists and other national security and public safety threats.”
The order also asked for enhanced screening measures for “all aliens seeking admission” to the United States.
The same month, he also implemented the executive order, Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism, which allows federal agencies to use “all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence”.
Immigration attorney Eric Lee, who represents several university students who have faced expulsion in cases related to pro-Palestine activism, said that green card holders would be impacted in an interview with Middle East Eye: “Taken together, these two executive orders essentially ban all non-citizens, including green card holders, from criticising the US government, its institutions, or the state of Israel on penalty of deportation.”
Earlier this month, the administration said it was revoking the green card of Palestinian graduate and activist Mahmoud Khalil, who played a prominent role in the Columbia University student protests over the past year. He is currently being held in a detention centre in Louisiana.
Last week, in advance of the new travel ban, the Trump administration began retroactively cancelling visas of Libyan students, according to a news report in The New Arab. American embassies in multiple countries notified some visa holders – including those already in the United States – that their visas had been revoked. These individuals were instructed to report to their respective US embassies for further interviews.
