Dismay and disbelief as Trump bans visitors from 12 countries

6/6/2025 6:06

Officials and residents in countries

whose citizens will soon be banned from visiting the United

States expressed dismay and disbelief on Thursday at President

Donald Trump's new sweeping travel ban as his administration

intensifies its immigration crackdown.



Trump signed a proclamation on Wednesday barring citizens of

12 countries from entering the U.S. starting on Monday,

asserting that the restrictions were necessary to protect

against "foreign terrorists."



The order was reminiscent of a similar move Trump

implemented during his first term in office from 2017 to 2021,

when he barred travelers from seven Muslim-majority nations.



That directive faced court challenges and went through

several iterations before the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ban

in 2018. Former President Joe Biden, a Democrat who succeeded

Trump, repealed that ban in 2021, calling it "a stain on our

national conscience."



But the new ban is much more expansive and covers

Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea,

Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.



Citizens of seven other countries - Burundi, Cuba, Laos,

Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela - will be

partially restricted.



A senior diplomat with the Sudanese Foreign Ministry,

who asked not to be named, said Trump's justification did not

stand up to scrutiny.



"Sudanese people have never been known to pose a terrorist

threat anywhere in the world," the official said.



Chad President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno said he had

instructed his government to stop granting visas to U.S.

citizens in response to Trump's action.



"Chad has neither planes to offer nor billions of dollars to

give, but Chad has its dignity and its pride," he said in a

Facebook post, referring to countries such as Qatar, which

gifted the U.S. a luxury airplane for Trump's use and promised

to invest billions of dollars in the U.S.



Afghans who worked for the U.S. or U.S.-funded projects and

were hoping to resettle in the U.S. expressed fear that the

travel ban would force them to return to their country, where

they could face reprisal from the Taliban.



Fatima, a 57-year-old Afghan women's rights defender waiting

in Pakistan for her U.S. visa to be processed, had her dreams

shattered overnight after Trump's order.



"Unfortunately, the decisions made by President Trump turned

all the hopes and beliefs of us into ashes," she told Reuters,

asking that only her first name be published for security

reasons.







BAN TO TAKE EFFECT MONDAY



Trump said the countries subject to the most severe

restrictions were determined to harbor a "large-scale presence

of terrorists," fail to cooperate on visa security, have an

inability to verify travelers' identities, as well as inadequate

record-keeping of criminal histories and high rates of visa

overstays in the United States.



He cited Sunday's incident in Boulder, Colorado, in which an

Egyptian national tossed a gasoline bomb into a crowd of

pro-Israel demonstrators as an example of why the new curbs are

needed. But Egypt was not part of the travel ban.



"Because Egypt has been a country that we deal with very

closely. They have things under control," Trump told reporters

in the Oval Office on Thursday.



When asked why he chose this moment to unveil the ban, he

said: "It can't come soon enough."



The visa ban takes effect on June 9 at 12:01 a.m. EDT

(0401 GMT). Visas issued before that date will not be revoked,

the order said.



In total, just under 162,000 immigrant visas and temporary

work, study, and travel visas were issued in fiscal year 2023 to

nationals of the affected countries in the now banned visa

categories, according to the Migration Policy Institute.



The ban is likely to face legal challenges. But Stephen

Yale-Loehr, a retired professor of immigration law at Cornell

Law School, said he expected those lawsuits to face an uphill

climb, because the latest ban contains various exemptions and

cited specific security concerns with each country.



The ban includes exemptions, such as for dual nationals,

permanent residents, immigrant visas for immediate family

members of U.S. citizens and athletes traveling for major

sporting events like the World Cup.



"Trump has learned from the mistakes of earlier travel

bans," he said.



Some foreign officials said they were prepared to work with

the U.S. to address Trump's security concerns.



"Somalia values its longstanding relationship with the

United States and stands ready to engage in dialogue to address

the concerns raised," Dahir Hassan Abdi, the Somali ambassador

to the United States, said in a statement.