President Donald Trump is considering expanding the scope of his controversial travel ban and applying it to an additional 36 countries, according to a new report from The Washington Post.
A State Department memo reviewed by the Post included a list of the countries, which features 25 African nations including Egypt and Uganda, as well as countries in Central Asia, the Pacific, and the Caribbean.
The memo, signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and sent to U.S. diplomats posted in the affected countries, stated that the governments of the countries flagged for inclusion in the ban were being given 60 days to meet new benchmarks set by the department or face a ban. Countries were given until 8 a.m. Wednesday to submit initial action plans for meeting the benchmarks.
The benchmarks these countries are currently failing to meet, according to the Trump administration, include issues like widespread government fraud, citizens overstaying their visas in the U.S., or the fact that some of the countries had “no competent or cooperative central government authority to produce reliable identity documents or other civil documents.” Another reason for inclusion was that citizens from those countries were facing claims of “antisemitic and anti-American activity” back in the U.S.
In addition to preparing action plans detailing how they will address these concerns, countries are also able to improve their standing if the agree to accept third-country nationals who have been removed from the United States.
The countries listed in the memo are Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Ethiopia, Egypt, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, South Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tonga, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The memo comes less than two weeks after Trump reinstated the travel ban initially introduced during his first term. That ban, which went into effect on June 4, applied to nationals from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, who are now banned from entering the U.S. Travelers from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela also face partially restricted entry to the U.S.
An earlier proposal saw the Trump administration consider targeting citizens of as many as 43 countries after dividing them into red, orange, and yellow lists. Travelers from countries on the red list would be banned entirely—those are the countries included in the June 4 ban—while citizens from orange countries would face severe visa restrictions. Citizens from countries on the yellow list would be given 60 days to address any concerns raised by their visa applications. Orange countries included Belarus, Haiti and Russia, while yellow countries included Chad, Dominica and Liberia.
The post Trump Mulls Adding 36 More Countries to Travel Ban appeared first on The Daily Beast.
