President Trump has targeted the citizens of a dozen countries as part of a new ban on travel to the United States and restricted travel for those from several more countries.
The restrictions touch more parts of the world and could affect more people than similar travel bans that were introduced during the first Trump administration.
All travelers who are citizens of countries in the first tier will be barred entry, while certain types of visas will be suspended for those countries in the second tier.
Shortly after he first took office in 2017, Mr. Trump tried to bar travelers from seven mostly Muslim-majority countries. Five of those countries are on the new list, plus several more countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, as well as Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela.
Mr. Trump’s order says the new travel ban does not apply to people with visas who are already in the United States, and it contains a few other exceptions. For example, Afghans eligible for the Special Immigrant Visa program, which is for those who helped the U.S. government during the war in Afghanistan, are excepted from the ban.
How many people come to the U.S. from these countries?
Last year, the State Department issued about 170,000 total visas to the 12 countries on the ban list. For most countries, the vast majority of those were nonimmigrant visitor visas for tourism, business or study. But for Afghans, Yemenis and Somalians, most were immigrant visas, typically allocated to immediate relatives of U.S. citizens or to skilled workers who are sponsored by their employers.
Visas previously issued to countries now on the travel ban list
Permanent immigrant and temporary nonimmigrant visas issued in 2024
What happened under the previous travel bans?
The introduction of the 2017 travel ban led to immediate chaos and confusion as hundreds of travelers were detained at airports across the country and more than 60,000 visas were provisionally revoked. Federal judges blocked the ban within a week.
Overall, travel from the countries banned in 2017 was relatively low to begin with, though people from Iran and Syria had arrived in the thousands each month. A back-and-forth in the courts delayed implementation, and then the Covid pandemic hit, halting travel globally.
But after January 2021, when President Biden lifted the bans, travel from many of those countries, most notably Iran, more than rebounded.
Travel to the U.S. from countries barred under 2017 travel ban
International visitor arrivals by country of citizenship
Mr. Trump ended up issuing four travel bans in his first term, with each version modifying its predecessor in order to pass legal scrutiny. It was almost a year before any ban actually took effect.
Here is a look back at the evolution of the travel bans under the first Trump administration from 2017 through 2020:
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