Trump Administration Set To Unveil New Travel Restrictions That Would Ban Venezuelans, Cubans

President Donald Trump is reportedly considering issuing new travel restrictions that would affect citizens of up to 43 countries, including nationals from Cuba, Afghanistan, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, and several African countries.

The new travel restrictions was first reported by The New York Times and is linked to the Jan. 20 executive order which directed several cabinet members to submit by March 21 a list of countries from which travel should either be partly or fully suspended due to “vetting and screening information” deficiencies.

According to officials who spoke to the outlet on the condition of anonymity, the drafted list would include up to 43 different countries separated in three groups based on the severity of the restrictions. Citizens of the 11 nations considered to be part of the “red” list would be flatly barred from entering the U.S. Those countries are Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen, according to the officials.

The “orange” list, which is set to include up to 10 nations, would see their travel restricted but not cut off. Citizens from countries in the orange list would also be subjected to mandatory in-person interviews before receiving a visa. According to officials, those countries are: Belarus, Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Turkmenistan.

The third group on Trump’s proposed travel ban would include up to 22 countries, with the vast majority of them being African nations, and they would have 60 days to address security concerns before being upgraded to either the orange or red tiers.

The outlet says it is not clear whether people with existing visas will be exempted from the ban or if their visas would be canceled nor if the Trump administration intends to exempt existing green card holders.

Trump’s 2017 travel ban

During his first term, President Trump passed executive orders that banned travel to the U.S. from several Muslim-majority countries such as Iran, Iraq and Syria.

Despite his many attempts to impose travel restrictions, courts blocked the government from enforcing the first two versions of these travel bans until in 2018 the Supreme Court greenlit a rewritten ban to take effect. Despite its many legal hurdles, Trump’s travel ban was eventually revoked by former president Joe Biden when he took office in 2021.

According to David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, Trump’s first-term travel bans “targeted people based on citizenship, even if they never lived in the country with supposedly insufficient vetting.”

In an article published on March 14, Bier argued that Trump’s new travel restrictions “would impose incredible damage to the U.S. economy and society based on utterly baseless security concerns” and separate “over 150,000 spouses and minor children of US citizens from their families in the United States.”