Officials and residents in countries whose citizens will soon be banned from visiting the US expressed dismay and disbelief yesterday at President Donald Trump’s new sweeping travel ban as his administration intensifies its immigration crackdown.
Trump signed a proclamation barring citizens of 12 countries from entering the US starting Monday, asserting that the restrictions were necessary to protect against “foreign terrorists.”
The order was reminiscent of a similar move Trump implemented during his first term in office from 2017 to 2021, when he barred travellers from seven Muslim-majority nations.
That directive faced court challenges and went through several iterations before the US Supreme Court upheld the ban in 2018. Former President Joe Biden, a Democrat who succeeded Trump, repealed that ban in 2021, calling it “a stain on our national conscience.”
But the new ban is much more expansive and covers Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Citizens of seven other countries – Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela – will be partially restricted.
A senior diplomat with the Sudanese Foreign Ministry said Trump’s justification did not stand up to scrutiny.
“Sudanese people have never been known to pose a terrorist threat anywhere in the world,” the official said.
Chad President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno said he had instructed his government to stop granting visas to US citizens in response to Trump’s action.
Afghans who worked for the US or US-funded projects and were hoping to resettle in the US expressed fear that the travel ban would force them to return to their country, where they could face reprisal from the Taliban.
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