The Trump administration is considering expanding President Trump’s new travel ban to as many as 36 additional countries if they do not address various security or diplomatic concerns within two months, according to a June 14 cable reviewed by The New York Times.
Most of the countries are in Africa, while others are in the Caribbean, the Pacific region and Central Asia.
This month, Mr. Trump imposed a full ban on entry to the United States on citizens of 12 countries and a partial ban on seven more, reviving a form of a much disputed policy from his first term.
The cable says that in addition to the 19 countries, the State Department had identified 36 more that must improve on certain benchmarks within 60 days. It set a deadline of 8 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday for the affected governments to provide remediation plans.
The countries in question “must take immediate action to mitigate ongoing vetting and screening concerns, develop corrective action plans to remediate deficiencies and evaluate progress,” the cable said.
The State Department has said it 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 has declined to comment more specifically on internal deliberations.
The cable, which was reported earlier by The Washington Post, cited a range of concerns that it said had put the countries on the list, but it cautioned that not every country raised the same issues. It did not say what the concerns were in each case.
The categories of concern included a lack of a competent central government that could produce reliable identity documents and criminal records; dubious passport security; significant rates of visa overstays; a lack of cooperation in taking back citizens being deported from the United States; and selling citizenship to people who do not live in their countries.
It also said a country could be subjected to a travel ban if its citizens were involved in terrorism or “antisemitic and anti-American activity in the United States.”
But the cable said that country could help mitigate concerns if its government agreed to accept people from other countries whom the United States was trying to deport but could not repatriate, or agreed to serve as a “safe third country” that took in migrants who applied for asylum in the United States.
The countries on the new list included Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Ethiopia, Egypt, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, South Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tonga, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The Times reported in March that the Trump administration was developing a travel ban that would have three tiers — a “red” list of countries whose nationals were completely banned; an “orange” group of countries whose access would be curtailed but not completely barred; and a “yellow” category in which countries would be given 60 days to change some perceived deficiencies or they would be added to one of the two other lists.
The Times also reported that month on a draft list of 43 countries that were provisionally slated for one of those three lists. But on June 4, Mr. Trump issued a proclamation that contained only full and partial bans — essentially, the red and orange lists, though the public document did not call them that.
Some countries had shifted from the draft. The countries whose citizens were fully banned from entering the United States were Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Mr. Trump also named seven others whose citizens cannot come to the United States permanently or get tourist or student visas, but can travel for business. They included Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
Mr. Trump’s policy of categorically barring entry to citizens of targeted 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.”
Soon after taking office in 2017, Mr. Trump issued what became the first of a 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. Courts blocked enforcement of the first two versions, but the Supreme Court eventually permitted a rewritten ban to take effect.
One of the first acts taken by Joseph R. Biden Jr. when he became president in 2021 was to rescind Mr. Trump’s travel bans and return to a system of individualized vetting for people from those countries. He called the bans “a stain on our national conscience” that undermined national security by jeopardizing “our global network of alliances and partnerships.”
When Mr. Trump returned to office in January, one of his first acts was an order directing the government to develop a new travel ban. He wrote that he was protecting Americans “from aliens who intend to commit terrorist attacks, threaten our national security, espouse hateful ideology or otherwise exploit the immigration laws for malevolent purposes.”
Edward Wong reports on global affairs, U.S. foreign policy and the State Department for The Times.
Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.
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