Trump Renews, Expands Travel Bans Amid Antisemitic Terror Attacks

The US will restrict travel from certain countries with high concentrations of Muslim terrorism, reviving a contentious initiative from President Donald Trump’s first term, the president announced Wednesday.

The travel ban, which will take effect Monday, blocks entry to the United States for citizens of 12 countries and imposes restrictions on travelers from seven more. While some of the 12 countries were also on the original list, others are new additions. The 12 banned nations are Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.

Meanwhile, enhanced restrictions will apply to travelers from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.

The move comes in the wake of recent antisemitic violence, according to three individuals who were present at a high-level meeting held Wednesday, Jewish Insider reported.

White House officials presented the order to a group of Jewish community leaders at a Wednesday meeting. The gathering was organized following Sunday’s terror attack in Boulder, Colorado, when a Muslim man hurled Molotov cocktails at a group of Jewish people walking to spread awareness of the plight of the hostages, which occurred two weeks after a deadly shooting in Washington, DC, in which an antisemitic man killed two Israeli embassy staffers before shouting “Free Palestine.” Fifteen people were injured in the Boulder attack, including an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor.

Trump explained in a video message that countries included in the ban suffer from what he called “deficient” screening procedures and have at times failed to repatriate their citizens. His reasoning is rooted in annual Homeland Security assessments that highlight nations with high visa overstay rates across categories such as tourism, business, and student visas.

“I must act to protect the national security and national interest of the United States and its people,” Trump stated in the official proclamation.

White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf informed the attendees at Wednesday’s meeting about the travel ban initiative, though he did not disclose which countries would be included. He indicated that President Trump might authorize the measure as early as Wednesday, which he did.

“They were just saying that an executive order regarding a travel ban is in the works,” one participant told Jewish Insider. “Everyone was very careful about what they said and didn’t say.”

According to another source, the order wasn’t directly prompted by the Boulder attack, but that incident was cited “as a rationale, as proof of why this executive order was so important.”

The suspect in the Boulder incident, Mohammed Soliman, is an Egyptian national who remained in the U.S. unlawfully after overstaying a visa, according to the Department of Homeland Security. His wife and five children were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday, pending deportation to Egypt, but a judge paused those proceedings on Wednesday.

Back in 2017, early in his first term, Trump enacted a travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries, though Egypt was not included in the original or updated ban.

Several senior officials briefed the room, including Susie Wiles, Trump’s White House chief of staff; Harmeet Dhillon, DOJ assistant attorney general for civil rights; Pastor Paula White and Jenny Korn from the White House Faith Office; Education Department senior advisor Noah Pollak; counterterrorism official Sebastian Gorka; hostage envoy Adam Boehler; White House Jewish liaison Martin Marks; and federal antisemitism task force chair Leo Terrell. Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, tapped by Trump to serve as U.S. antisemitism envoy, also attended.

The event brought together leaders from a broad range of Jewish organizations, including representatives from Chabad, the Jewish Federations of North America, the ADL, the Orthodox Union, the AJC, the Conference of Presidents, AIPAC, Agudath Israel, and other Brooklyn-based Orthodox groups.