Draft List for New Travel Ban Proposes Trump Target 43 Countries

The Trump administration is considering targeting the citizens of as many as 43 countries as part of a new ban on travel to the United States that would be broader than the restrictions imposed during President Trump’s first term, according to officials familiar with the matter.

A draft list of recommendations developed by diplomatic and security officials suggests a “red” list of 11 countries whose citizens would be flatly barred from entering the United States. They are Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen, the officials said.

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Officials at embassies and in regional bureaus at the State Department, and security specialists at other departments and intelligence agencies, have been reviewing the draft. They are providing comment about whether descriptions of deficiencies in particular countries are accurate or whether there are policy reasons — like not risking disruption to cooperation on some other priority — to reconsider including some.

The draft proposal also included an “orange” list of 10 countries for which travel would be restricted but not cut off. In those cases, affluent business travelers might be allowed to enter, but not people traveling on immigrant or tourist visas.

Citizens on that list would also be subjected to mandatory in-person interviews in order to receive a visa. It included Belarus, Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Turkmenistan.

When he took office on Jan. 20, Mr. Trump issued an executive order requiring the State Department to identify 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.”

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It is also not clear whether people with existing visas would be exempted from the ban, or if their visas would be canceled. Nor is it clear whether the administration intends to exempt existing green card holders {snip}

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Some of the countries on the draft red and orange lists were sanctioned by Mr. Trump in his first-term travel bans, but many are new. Some share characteristics with the earlier lists — they are generally Muslim-majority or otherwise nonwhite, poor and have governments that are considered weak or corrupt.

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The proposal also includes a draft “yellow” list of 22 countries that would be given 60 days to clear up perceived deficiencies, with the threat of being moved onto one of the other lists if they did not comply.

Such 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, which could serve as a loophole around the restrictions.

That list, the officials said, included Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Vanuatu and Zimbabwe.

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