U.S. Could Issue New Travel Ban This Week

Global

Trump administration is expanding the president's first-term travel ban, according to reports. Category-level security measures could single out business travelers from some countries to obtain limited travel visas while still restricting tourist and immigration visas.

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.