WASHINGTON—President Trump on Wednesday signed a sweeping travel ban on 12 countries, largely in the Middle East and Africa, and introduced more-limited travel restrictions on seven others, reintroducing a controversial immigration policy that came to define the early days of his first term.
The ban will completely bar travel to the U.S. by citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Citizens from an additional list of countries will be barred from permanently immigrating to the U.S., along with applying for tourist or student visas. Those countries are Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. Citizens from these seven countries will still be eligible for other temporary visas, such as the H-1B temporary work visa.
The ban, which the White House said would go into effect on Monday , only applies to people outside the U.S., though anyone currently in the country who leaves could get stuck abroad as a result of it. It also excludes any nationals of these countries who hold green cards, along with anyone traveling to the U.S. for coming major sporting events, including the World Cup in 2026 and the Olympics in 2028. Afghans who receive special immigrant visas—a visa reserved for Afghans who worked alongside the U.S. military during its two-decade presence in Afghanistan—are also exempt.
The administration justified the restrictions in a number of ways. Several of the countries, it said, had unacceptably high temporary-visa overstay rates, necessitating a ban. Others, it said, couldn’t be relied upon to issue valid passports to verify a person’s identity. Haiti, the only country in the Western Hemisphere to face a complete ban, was included because “hundreds of thousands of illegal Haitian aliens flooded into the U.S. during the Biden administration,” the White House said.
Trump, in a video posted to his Truth Social platform , said the recent attack in Boulder, Colo., underscored dangers posed to the country. Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the suspect in the flamethrower attack, was in the U.S. from Egypt on an expired visa , the Department of Homeland Security said, having entered the country in August 2022 on a B2 visa. That visa, typically used for tourism, expired in February 2023.
Egypt wasn’t on the list of banned countries.
Trump in the video said the list is subject to revision. “Very simply, we cannot have open migration from any country where we cannot safely and reliably vet and screen those who seek to enter the United States,” he said.
“My God, what misfortune we’ve had to suffer,” said Niurka Melendez, a Venezuelan who heads the advocacy group Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid in New York. “This is another terrible blow against our people. I mean, wow.”
Venezuelans who had hoped to join loved ones in the U.S. would now see their plans dashed, along with those simply hoping to visit or study in American colleges. She blamed the Venezuelan government for failing to issue official documents from passports to identification cards, leaving citizens unable to prove their identity.
The ban stops Cuban academics and students from attending U.S. colleges. It also bars a small but influential group of entrepreneurs and intellectuals who had previously been encouraged to visit the U.S. in support of their work on the island, said Augusto Maxwell, chair of Akerman LLP’s Cuba practice in Miami.
Some Democrats quickly decried the move.
“Banning a whole group of people because you disagree with the structure or function of their government not only lays blame in the wrong place, it creates a dangerous precedent,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.), a progressive who is the top Democrat on the Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement.
“Further, banning people fleeing dangerous countries like Afghanistan—a country where many people are in danger due to their work assisting the U.S. military — the Congo, Haiti and Sudan, will only further destabilize global security,” Jayapal posted on X.
Mohammed Hassan, who heads the Darfur Network for Human Rights, a Sudanese advocacy group, said the ban was yet another indication of how Trump is “inconsiderate” of the suffering in Sudan, which has been engulfed in civil war for more than two years.
“Many Sudanese affected depend on remittances from their relatives who live in the U.S.,” Hassan said. “The ban is very ruthless.”
He predicted the ban would hamper aid activities run by Sudanese living in the U.S., who have been assisting many of the roughly 12 million people displaced by the conflict. These include the Sudanese American Physicians Association, which sends hundreds of U.S.-based Sudanese health workers every year to provide medical aid to people affected by the war.
Trump repeatedly promised during the presidential campaign that, if re-elected, he would bring back an expanded version of his first travel ban, though the issuance of the ban took months longer than expected. In anticipation, numerous universities and businesses advised their students and employees to remain in the country after Trump’s inauguration to avoid being ensnared.
Citizens of many of the countries on the final list have been on high alert for months, after earlier lists circulated in several media reports. It isn’t likely, then, that the new ban would create scenes of chaos at airports across the country, as the first travel ban did when Trump signed it in a surprise move a week after taking office in 2017.
After several years of litigation, the Supreme Court in 2018 upheld the legality of Trump’s travel ban, so long as the administration could articulate a rationale for why countries are included. That will make it tougher for immigration advocates to challenge this new ban. Still, it isn’t clear how the administration included certain countries when others that meet similar criteria were left off the list.
“This policy sends a chilling message to those who supported U.S. efforts in the country,” said the Afghan-American Foundation. While the ban doesn’t apply to individuals on Special Immigrant Visas, who served with the U.S. Army or played supporting roles as translators and interpreters, it will make it difficult for Afghans who have that status to reunite their families in the United States.
The foundation also noted that the decision to bar travel from Afghanistan on the grounds visitors from there pose a security risk to the U.S. is at odds with a previous decision to rescind temporary protection from deportation for Afghans in the U.S., citing improved conditions in the country.
Mohamed Abdi Mohamed, a 36-year-old U.S. citizen and former government official in Somalia, where he currently lives, described the latest ban as un-American and a drastic measure.
Jawaahir Dahir, chair of the international nonprofit Global Somali Diaspora, said the ban would expose Somalis in the diaspora to discrimination and xenophobia. More than 200,000 Somalis live in the U.S., according to the last U.S. census in 2020, with the largest populations in Minnesota and Ohio.
The Trump ban, which links the East African country to terrorism, could leave financial flows to Somalia open to heightened scrutiny from banks, making it more difficult for emigrant families to send money home, Dahir said.
“We have to remember that these remittances are a lifeline for many families in Somalia,” used to pay for medical care and school tuition, he said.
