Trump Bans Citizens of 12 Countries From Traveling to U.S.

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.

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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.

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