U.S. president Donald Trump could sign an executive order as
early as this week that would build on his travel ban from 2017 that restricted
entry to the United States for citizens of seven largely Muslim countries, which
the Trump administration regards as having insufficient immigration screening
and security measures in place.
Reports from both Reuters and the New York Times cited
officials within the Trump administration who said that a new executive order would
not only ban travel to the U.S. for most countries listed in the president’s
original order—Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen—but would also
create an expanded list and would establish security mitigation requirements
for other countries.
A draft of the order currently circulating among government
officials has added Afghanistan to the list of so-called “red” countries whose
citizens would be barred from traveling to the U.S., but it is unclear if that
inclusion is final.
A category of “orange”-level countries is also proposed in
the draft order, according to reports. It is not yet known what countries fall
into that category, but those that do are expected to be subject to additional screening
processes in order to obtain travel visas to the U.S. The types of visas from
such countries are also expected to be limited, for example, to individuals
traveling on business but largely denied to tourists or those seeking to
immigrate.
A third category of “yellow”-level countries would be
required to enhance their current security and screening processes within 60
days or risk being elevated to one of the other categories. Such gaps could
include failure to provide the United States with certain traveler information or
insufficient security practices for issuing passports.
It is unclear, for now, whether travel and immigration visas
for individuals from those countries currently within the United States will remain active or will
be cancelled.
President Trump in January set the stage for increased travel
and immigration security measures. He tasked the State Department, Homeland Security,
National Intelligence and the Attorney General via
an executive order to devise a list of countries where “vetting and
screening information is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full
suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries.”
The list was to be submitted within 60 days, which means it
is due within the next 10 days. The January order instructed the departments
reviewing country-by-country security measures to use as a baseline “the screening
and vetting standards and procedures, consistent with the uniform baseline that
existed on January 19, 2021,” which was Trump’s final day in office before Joe
Biden, who succeeded Trump’s first administration, repealed the travel ban on his
first day in office.
While Trump’s first
travel ban met with a wall of legal resistance after a hasty rollout in late
January 2017 that roiled airport security, it ultimately won approval with the United
States Supreme Court in June 2018, after nearly 18 months of revisions and
court reversals. That decision likely clears the way for the 2025 version to
take effect without legal upheaval.
The Global Business Travel Association estimated that Trump’s
2017 travel bans and electronics policies reduced business and meetings travel-related
spending to the U.S. by $1.3
billion that year.