March 16, 2025
Trump Drafts Travel Ban Targeting 43 Countries — Nearly Half In Africa
Several Caribbean are also on the list.
A draft list from within the Trump administration shows that Trump 2.0 is building on the 2017 version of its travel ban, which restricted entry to the U.S. from citizens of certain countries. Initially referred to as a “Muslim Ban,” the order was challenged in court but upheld until President Joe Biden rescinded it upon taking office in 2020.
According to The New York Times, this revised travel ban of 43 countries now has tiers ranging in severity from red, the worst, to yellow, the least severe, and was developed by diplomatic and security officials, although those officials indicated to the outlet on condition of anonymity that changes could be made by the time the draft reaches the White House.
Presently, the draft lists Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen as “red” countries, meaning all travel is banned from those countries to the United States. The draft lists Belarus, Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and Turkmenistan as “orange” countries, which means that ordinary citizens of those countries are subject to an in-person interview to receive visas to enter the country, but this would most likely not apply to affluent business travelers.
The final, and most expansive tier, the yellow tier, lists Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, The Republic of Congo, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Vanuatu, and Zimbabwe; being placed on this tier means that countries have 60 days to address concerns of the State Department before being moved up to the next tier.
According to the Times, some of the countries on this list were on the travel ban from 2017, but many were not, and those designated for the red and orange lists share characteristics like being Muslim-majority countries, large non-white and poor populations, and have governments that are considered corrupt.
This ban comes on the heels of the Trump administration and Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) canceling the green card of and later detaining Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian who is a permanent resident of the United States, over his high-profile protests of Israel’s war on Palestinians in Gaza at Columbia University, protests which the Trump administration claims are anti-semitic, which has in turn sparked concerns of an administration attempting to stifle dissent by any means necessary.
Civil rights groups and protestors have characterized the actions of the federal government in Khalil’s arrest and subsequent detention as an infringement on the right to free speech enshrined in the United States Constitution, and the Columbia School of Journalism issued a statement to NBC News which connected Trump’s lawsuits against the press to the actions the Trump administration took against Khalil.
“One does not have to agree with the political opinions of any particular individual to understand that these threats cut to the core of what it means to live in a pluralistic democracy,” the journalism school said in a statement. “The use of deportation to suppress foreign critics runs parallel to an aggressive campaign to use libel laws in novel — even outlandish ways — to silence or intimidate the independent press.”
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