The Trump administration is finalizing a new ban on travel to the United States for citizens of certain countries that would be broader than the versions President Trump issued in his first term, according to two officials familiar with the matter.
A draft recommendation circulating inside the executive branch proposes a “red” list of countries whose citizens Mr. Trump could bar from entering the United States, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal deliberations.
One of the officials said the proposed red list currently consists mainly of countries whose nationals were restricted under versions of Mr. Trump’s previous travel ban. Last time, those countries included Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.
The draft tentatively proposes adding Afghanistan to the group whose citizens would be categorically barred from entering the United States, according to one of the officials.
Shawn VanDiver, the head of a nonprofit group that helps resettle Afghans who worked with U.S. forces during the war, said he learned from officials that Afghan citizens would be subject to a complete travel ban.
On Wednesday morning, the group put out an emergency statement titled “Afghan Travel Ban coming” that urged Afghans with valid visas who are currently outside the United States to come back immediately. Later on Wednesday, Reuters also reported that Afghanistan would be recommended for a complete travel ban.
The recommendations also have an “orange” group of countries whose access would be curtailed but not completely barred. For example, only certain types of visas might be issued — like for relatively affluent people traveling for business, but not immigrants or tourists — and the length of visas could be shortened. Applicants would be required to have in-person interviews.
Countries in a third or “yellow” category would be given 60 days to change some perceived deficiencies or they would be added to one of the two other lists, the officials said.
Those issues could include failing to share with the United States information about incoming travelers, purportedly inadequate security practices for issuing passports, or the selling of citizenship to people from banned countries, as a loophole around the restrictions.
It is not clear whether people with existing visas would be exempted from the ban, or if those visas would be canceled. Many Afghans have been approved for resettlement in the United States as refugees or under special visas granted to people who assisted the United States during the war. It is also not clear whether green card holders, who are approved for permanent residency, would be affected.
About 200,000 Afghans in their native country and 51,000 outside, half in Pakistan, are in the official pipeline to come to the United States, with tens of thousands ready to travel and with housing already arranged, said Mr. VanDiver, a Navy veteran who is president of AfghanEvac, the nonprofit group.
“This is the most vetted population that there has ever been,” he said in an interview on Thursday. “It is crazy how much these people go through.”
He added that many veterans of the war in Afghanistan who had voted for Mr. Trump now felt fury as word of a possible travel ban has spread. “They’re saying, ‘This isn’t what I voted for,’” he said. “The deal was you need to bring our wartime allies home. And they’re just betraying these folks.”
In one of the many executive orders he issued on Inauguration Day, Mr. Trump ordered the State Department to start identifying countries “for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries.”
Mr. Trump gave the State Department 60 days to finish a report for the White House with such a list — meaning it is due in about two weeks. He directed the Justice and Homeland Security Departments and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to work with the State Department on the project.
The State Department press office said in a statement that it was following Mr. Trump’s executive order and was “committed to protecting our nation and its citizens by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process,” but it also declined to specifically comment on internal deliberations.
The State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs was assigned to take the lead in coming up with a first draft, according to the people familiar with the matter, but the lists for each of the three categories are still in flux.
In addition to security specialists at the other departments and intelligence agencies, regional bureaus at the State Department and U.S. embassies around the world are reviewing the draft. They are providing comment about whether deficiencies identified in particular countries are accurate or whether there is a policy argument — like not risking disruption to cooperation on some other priority — to reconsider including some.
Mr. Trump’s policy of categorically barring entry to citizens of certain countries traces back to his campaign call, in December 2015, for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”
After he took office in January 2017, Mr. Trump issued what became the first of an iterative series of bans. They initially focused on a set of Muslim-majority countries but later also encompassed other low-income and nonwhite countries, including in Africa.
The first travel ban caused chaos, in part because Mr. Trump issued it without warning. Some people learned that they had been barred from entry only after they arrived in the United States. Major protests were held at airports against the new administration.
Courts blocked the government from enforcing the first two versions, but the Supreme Court eventually permitted a rewritten ban to take effect.
When Joseph R. Biden Jr. became president in January 2021, he rescinded Mr. Trump’s travel bans as one of his first acts and returned to a system of individualized vetting for people from those countries.
Mr. Biden’s proclamation labeled the travel bans “just plain wrong,” calling them “a stain on our national conscience” and “inconsistent with our long history of welcoming people of all faiths and no faith at all.” The actions, Mr. Biden said, also “undermined our national security” by jeopardizing “our global network of alliances and partnerships.”
In his executive order in January setting in motion the restoration and expansion of travel bans, Mr. Trump said he was acting to protect American citizens “from aliens who intend to commit terrorist attacks, threaten our national security, espouse hateful ideology or otherwise exploit the immigration laws for malevolent purposes.”
