WASHINGTON − President Donald Trump is expected to ban or severely restrict travel to the United States by citizens of more than a dozen countries, including Iran and Venezuela, as soon as Friday.
Trump ordered his administration to establish vetting and screening standards and procedures for entry into the U.S. and submit a list of countries that do not meet them by March 21. The order follows on a campaign pledge and an initiative from Trump’s first day in office.
He also directed officials to identify and potentially remove nationals from earmarked countries who entered the U.S. during the Biden administration.
The resulting actions could be more sweeping than the travel ban Trump put on seven majority-Muslim countries during hisfirst term that led to chaos at airports and lawsuits alleging religious discrimination.
Trump issued multiple versions of the ban in 2017 until he landed on one that the Supreme Court upheld, and his most recent executive order directs members of his Cabinet to expand on what was in place when he exited office.
This time around, Trump went through a more rigorous process to implement his expected travel ban, calling for restrictions based on the level of information that countries collect and provide on international travelers. And he will benefit from an even more conservative Supreme Court when his executive actions face legal challenges.
A list of more than 40 countries whose citizens could be barred or limited from entry into the United States is reportedly under consideration. That list includes, Afghanistan, North Korea and even tiny Bhutan, a majority-Buddhist Himalayan nation.
The State Department declined on Thursday afternoon to comment on the deliberations.
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Trump said as a candidate that he’d reinstate his travel ban, citing a need to protect the country from “radical Islamic terrorists.”
His Jan. 20 executive order called on Cabinet members to submit a report identifying countries “for which vetting and screening is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension” of admission to the U.S.
The report should also identify “how many nationals from those countries” have entered or been admitted to the United States since Jan. 20, 2021, the first day of former President Joe Biden’s term.
Trump tasked four individuals with producing the report: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
The Trump administration appears to be structuring its second term ban differently than the first one, creating a three-tiered list of nations that do not provide the U.S. with the level of information it is seeking or are otherwise deemed by officials as a national security threat.
Countries on the “red” list would see travel to the U.S. banned altogether, while countries on the middle, or “orange” list would face visa restrictions. A lower tier of nations would be put on notice by the administration that they need to address problems.
Travel could be banned from 11 countries, according to the New York Times, which obtained a draft list of recommendations for the travel ban. Those are Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.
Trump previously banned travel from most of the countries on that list, with the exception of visa and green card holders. Bhutan and Cuba were not part of Trump’s previous travel ban. The State Department lists Cuba as a state sponsor of terror.
Another 10 countries, including Russia and Belarus, would see visas sharply restricted. The remaining 22 countries, which includes many African nations, would have 60 days to address security concerns. They could ultimately be moved up on the list or completely left off, depending on their response.
Reuters reported on a similar memo. The list had not been finalized, the outlets cautioned, and may not have been approved yet by the secretary of state.
“Not all those countries will likely survive being on the list, because the staff is just looking at what they were told, what were their instructions, which were to ascertain and to evaluate each country,” said former acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf, the executive vice president of the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute. “But there’s other decisions at play on whether a country gets a travel restriction or not.”
“There are other geopolitical issues,” Wolf added. “That’s why it goes to the secretary of State. That’s why others will weigh in on those decisions.”
Based on what has been reported publicly, Wolf said it sounded like the administration plans to tell countries that until they increase their information sharing with the U.S. or provide certain data, they will have travel restrictions in place.
One factor the administration is likely to take into consideration is how frequently a country reports lost or stolen passport data to Interpol.
“What we found the first time around is a lot of countries just didn’t report that in a timely manner,” said Wolf, who worked on Trump’s earlier travel ban.
The State Department denied the existence of a list earlier in the week and said it did not create the memorandums that have been circulating.
“There is a review, as we know through the president’s executive order, for us to look at the nature of what’s going to help keep America safer, in dealing with the issue of visas and who’s allowed into the country,” Tammy Bruce, the spokeswoman for the State Department, said Monday.
Unlike Trump’s first iteration of a ban in 2017, which led to court challenges for discrimination against Muslims, the reported reincarnation does not focus solely on Muslim-majority countries. Bhutan, Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela are being reportedly considered for outright bans but do not have Muslim majorities.
A court blocked Trump’s first travel ban, issued in January 2017, saying the order violated people’s due process rights without sufficient national security justification. His administration replaced that with a second version in March 2017, which another court blocked. The Supreme Court upheld the third iteration of his travel ban that he signed in September 2017.
In its 2018 decision, the Supreme Court outlined a lengthy process that the government used to create the third travel ban, highlighted ways that certain foreign nationals can get exceptions to the travel ban, and argued the Trump administration was acting in “legitimate national security interest.”
The process is similar to what Trump outlined in his Jan. 20 executive order. But critics have signaled they could challenge fresh aspects of the new administration’s policies, including the attempts to retroactively apply visa restrictions to individuals who entered the country during the period Trump was not in office.
The International Refugee Assistance Program, one of the groups that sued in the first administration, said its next steps would depend on what is in the anticipated ban.
“Our team will be analyzing it as soon as it comes out to identify what those challenges might look like,” said Stephanie Gee, senior director of US legal services at IRAP.
“To the extent there are arguments to be made that the action is unlawful, there are a lot of organizations who will be looking to bring challenges.”
Trump already appears to implementing part of his executive order, which allows the secretary of Homeland Security to “take immediate steps” to exclude or remove a foreign national from countries without proper vetting standards.
The order cites advocacy for “foreign terrorist” groups and “hostile attitudes” towards U.S. “citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles” as reasons for visa rejection and possible removal.
The Trump administration this month deported a kidney doctor with work visa after she attempted to enter the country on a flight to Boston. The Department of Homeland Security said she had “sympathetic photos and videos” to a leader of Hezbollah on her phone.
“A visa is a privilege not a right,” the department said on X. “Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied. This is commonsense security.”
“I’m a Shia Muslim,” authorities say Dr. Rasha Alawieh said, according to the USA TODAY Network. “He’s a religious figure. It has nothing to do with politics. It’s all religious, spiritual things.”
Federal authorities also arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist attending graduate school at the Colombia University. Khalil was in the U.S. legally.
After his arrest, Rubio said, “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”
The State Department acknowledged Thursday that it was conducting a review of all visa programs, as mandated by Trump’s order but declined to say whether it had made any formal recommendations or when they could go into effect.
The Trump administration’s report recommending countries for a travel ban is due Friday, March 21.
