President Donald Trump has revived his abhorrent and racist travel ban from his first disastrous term in office, this time banning travel from 12 majority-minority countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
Starting on Monday, people from Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen will be banned from traveling to the United States. Trump also partially limited travel to the United States for people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela, saying people from those countries cannot get tourist or student visas.
Current visa holders, legal permanent residents, and athletes traveling to the United States for sporting events are exempt from the ban. That athlete restriction was necessary as the United States is hosting the World Cup next year—though we imagine people from those countries may have reservations about traveling to a country where masked immigration cops have been arresting and detaining people even when they are citizens or have the legal right to be here.
Trump, for his part, said the ban was necessary after a terror attack in Colorado over the weekend, when protestors demanding the return of Israeli hostages from Gaza were firebombed by an Egyptian national.
“The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colo., has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas,” Trump said in a video posted to Truth Social announcing the travel ban. “We don’t want them.”
However, Egypt is not on the list of banned countries.
Legal experts told The New York Times that Trump's new travel ban is more likely to withstand legal challenges, unlike the first one which was initially blocked by the courts.
“They seem to have learned some lessons from the three different rounds of litigation we went through during the first Trump administration,” Stephen Vladeck, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, told The New York Times. “But a lot will depend upon how it’s actually enforced—and whether it’s applied in ways that are themselves unlawful or even unconstitutional.”
Ultimately, this is the latest anti-immigrant move Trump has taken since he unfortunately reentered office and unleashed a reign of terror.
Related | Trump's exception to refugee ban seems about white
At the same time Trump is trying to ban immigrants from majority-minority countries, he is accepting white South African farmers who claim to be persecuted, and spreading misinformation about their plight. Trump falsely claimed the white South Africans are the victims of a genocide.
“This is Trump’s reckless first term travel ban all over again,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said in a post on X. “Just like before, Trump’s expanded ban on travelers from around the world will not improve our national security and will only further isolate the U.S. from the rest of world. Bigotry is not a national security strategy.”
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