Implementation of U.S. Travel Ban May Be Imminent

By Jonathan Trager

The Trump administration seems poised to impose a new travel ban on foreign citizens from targeted countries entering the United States following a March 21 deadline for finalizing the proposed measure (after USAE went to press).

The New York Times had reported earlier this month that the administration was working on developing the proposal, which the news outlet said could affect citizens from 41 countries.

Drafts of the list obtained by the Times and others suggested the included countries be divided into three tiers: red, orange, and yellow. The red tier—which indicates a flat ban on entry—would include Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen.

“The proposed ban includes different levels of restrictions, which appear to be calculated to deal with expected legal challenges or implementation challenges, including those related to the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, due process, and discrimination, as seen with the 2017 travel ban,” according to National Law Review.

Trump had signed an executive order on January 20 calling on several agencies to identify countries from which travel should be partly or fully suspended because their “vetting and screening information is so deficient.” It gave the agencies — including the departments of State, Justice and Homeland Security — 60 days to produce the list.

The new travel ban would be an expansion of one the administration issued in 2017. That ban—which targeted the Muslim-majority nations of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen—was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018.

The White House has yet to publicly comment on the proposed measure. However, more than 30 Democratic members of Congress have sent a letter to Trump that called the proposed travel ban “reckless” and argued it would be economically damaging.

“There is absolutely no national security imperative to wholesale ban travelers from large swaths of the globe,” according to the letter. “Nationality is simply not correlated with threats to our security.”

USAE will provide more information regarding the impact of such a ban on the travel and tourism industry as it becomes available.