Trump Confirms Travel Ban Expansion

President Trump and the First Lady on Air Force One (Flickr)

President Donald Trump confirmed reports that his administration is planning to expand its travel ban in an interview with the Wall Street Journal at the World Economic Forum on January 21. However, he didn’t disclose which new countries would be added to the policy.

“We’re adding a couple of countries,” Trump said. “We have to be safe. Our country has to be safe. You see what’s going on in the world. Our country has to be safe.”

The announcement comes three years after the administration released the original travel ban, which temporarily restricted the admission of citizens from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. The executive order incited criticism about targeting Muslim-majority countries and immigrants based on national origin. However, court-issued injunctions hampered the implementation of the original order.

Trump later released more executive orders revising the original, adding Venezuela and North Korea to the list of restricted countries. The Supreme Court upheld the ban in a 5-4 decision in 2018.

While the new countries for the travel ban have not been officially announced, Politico reports that Belarus, Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania are all under consideration. Unlike currently restricted nations, some of these countries have stable diplomatic relations with the United States. For example, Nigeria is a U.S. counter-terrorism ally and there is a large Nigerian immigrant community in the US.

The Trump administration is set to announce an official list of new countries for the travel ban sometime next week. The expansion will likely reignite legal debates concerning the president’s power to regulate immigration as well as spur questions concerning the criteria for determining whether a country’s immigration should be restricted.