The Trump administration has finalised a new ban on the US for citizens of a particular country that is wider than the version Trump issued in his first term, according to two officials familiar with the issue.
The draft recommendations circulating within the enforcement division propose a “red” list of countries that could bar Trump from entering the United States, officials said they discussed sensitive internal deliberations on terms of anonymity.
One authorities said the proposed red list now consists primarily of countries with national restrictions based mainly on Trump's previous version of travel bans. Last time, these countries included Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.
The draft tentatively proposes adding Afghanistan to groups that are firmly banned from entering the United States, according to one official.
Sean Vandivar, head of a nonprofit that helps resettle Afghans who worked with the US military during the war, said he learned from officials that Afghan citizens would be subject to a complete travel ban.
On Wednesday morning, the group issued an emergency statement entitled “No travel to Afghanistan.” This prompted me to get a valid visa currently outside the US and to come back soon. Later on Wednesday, Reuters also reported that Afghanistan was recommended for a complete travel ban.
The recommendations include the “Orange” group, the “Orange” group, which reduces access but is not completely prohibited. For example, only certain types of visas may be issued. This can reduce the length of the visa, like relatively wealthy people traveling for business, rather than immigrants or tourists. Applicants must undergo in-person interviews.
Vandiver said officials told him that Pakistan would end up in this or a more strict “red” class.
Countries in the third or “yellow” category will be given 60 days to change perceived defects or added to one of the other two lists, officials said.
These issues include sharing with the US about incoming travelers, inadequate security practices to issue passports, or selling citizenship to people in prohibitive countries, as a loophole within the restrictions.
It is not clear whether people with existing visas will be exempt from the ban or whether those visas will be cancelled. Many Afghans are approved as US resettlement under special visas granted to those who supported the US during the war. It is also not clear whether green card holders with approved permanent residency will be affected.
Around 200,000 Afghans in their home country, half of Pakistan and 51,000 people outside are in the official pipeline that comes to the US.
“This is the most vetted population ever,” he said in an interview Thursday. “It's strange how much these people go through.”
He added that many of the war veterans in Afghanistan who voted for Trump were angry as the possible travel ban was spreading. “They say, 'This isn't what I voted for,'” he said. “This deal was about having to bring wartime allies home, and they're just betraying these people.”
In one of the many executive orders he issued on his inauguration day, Trump ordered the State Department to identify the country.
Trump completed the White House report to the State Department for 60 days on such a list. This means that the deadline will be in about two weeks. He directed the offices of the Judiciary and Homeland Security Department and the Director of National Intelligence to work with the Project's State Department.
In a statement, a State Department news agency said it had followed Trump's executive order and “promised to protect our country and its citizens by maintaining the highest standards of national security and public safety through the visa process,” but it also declined to comment specifically on the internal deliberations.
The State Department's Consular Office was assigned to take the lead in coming up with the first draft, according to those familiar with the issue, but the list of each of the three categories is still in fluidity.
In addition to security specialists from other departments and intelligence reporting agencies, the Department of State's Regional Bureau and US Embassies around the world review drafts. They provide comments on whether defects identified in a particular country are accurate. Or we provide comments on whether there is a policy debate to reconsider some to avoid risking disruptions in cooperation with other priorities.
Trump's policy of adamantly banning citizens from entering certain countries dates back to his campaign call in December 2015 for “a complete and complete closure of Muslims entering the United States until our representatives can understand what is going on.”
After taking office in January 2017, Trump published what became the first series of a series of bans. They initially focused on a large group of Muslim countries, but also other low-income and non-white countries, including later Africa.
The first travel ban caused confusion as Trump issued it without warning. Some people learned that they were only banned from entering the country after they arrived in the United States. Major protests have been held at the airport against the new administration.
The court blocked the government from enforcing the first two versions, but the Supreme Court ultimately allowed the rewritten ban to take effect.
When Joseph R. Biden Jr. became president in January 2021, he retracted Trump's travel ban as one of his first acts and returned to a system of individual reviews for the people of those countries.
Biden's declaration labeled the travel ban as “just wrong,” calling it a “stain of our people's conscience,” and “welcome people of all faiths and contradicts our long history of no faith at all.” The action “defines our national security” by putting “a global network of alliances and partnerships” at risk.
In an executive order in January, in the recovery and expansion of the travel ban, Trump said he was acting to protect American citizens from aliens who intend to exploit immigration laws for malicious purposes, terrorist attacks, threatening national security, support ideologies of hate, or otherwise exploiting immigration laws for malicious purposes.
