David J. Bier and Alex Nowrasteh
President Trump signed a proclamation on June 5 that, with few exceptions, bans nineteen nationalities from entering the United States, supposedly based on “security” concerns, and went into effect on June 9. The ban rejects the fundamental principle of US immigration law against discrimination between immigrants from different countries. It imposes devastating consequences on immigrants and foreign travelers, while severely harming their US citizen relatives, employers, and others. It also repudiates America’s principled tradition of welcoming immigrants fleeing theocracies and the worst socialist tyrannies.
The president claims that there is no way to vet these immigrants. Yet that is precisely what his consular officers and border officials were successfully doing for decades—up until June 9. Trump provides no evidence beyond innuendo that the disfavored peoples pose a security threat. Only one immigrant born in any of these countries has killed anyone in a terrorist attack since 1981, and these immigrants are less likely to commit crimes serious enough to warrant incarceration in the United States than US-born Americans.
As we warned at the time, the Supreme Court greenlit this power grab over the legal immigration system during Trump’s first term. Now the president is taking full advantage of it, doing grave damage to America in the process. Although there are some carve-outs, the exceptions only go to the extent that the government knows there is no imminent threat from these immigrants. This action is just the latest in President Trump’s unrelenting assault on legal immigrants to the United States. Over four years, the ban will bar about 120,000 immigrants and over half a million temporary travelers.
The Immigrants Targeted
President Trump’s proclamation divides his ban into two groups (“full” and “partial”). The only difference between them is that some guest workers and fiancés of US citizens can enter from the partial ban group. Everyone else from the partially banned countries is still banned.
- The “full” ban group (which still includes some exceptions): Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.
- The “partial” ban group: Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.
Cubans would have the most legal permanent immigrants threatened by this action. With 30,524 likely banned over four years, they account for 25 percent of all immigrant visa applicants threatened. Yemenis and Iranians follow with about 17,000 immigrant visas threatened (~15 percent each). Among nonimmigrants, Venezuelans make up the biggest share. About a quarter of a million Venezuelans will lose their right to travel over the next four years, 44 percent of the total number of banned travelers. Iranians (73,000) and Burmese (57,000) are second and third, respectively.
The categories included in the ban are:
– Immigrant visas for prospective legal permanent residents: 120,300 over four years, including:
- 5,700 workers
- 62,600 relatives of US citizens and legal permanent residents, including 35,500 spouses and minor children of green card holders
– Nonimmigrant workers: 14,500 over four years
– Fiancé(e)s of US citizens (K visa): nearly 8,000 over four years
– Business travelers (B‑1): About 80,000 of the B visas
– Other visitors (B‑2): About 400,000 of the B visas
– Students (F): About 41,000 over four years
The most egregious of these are the spouses and minor children of green card holders and fiancé(e)s of US citizens. There is no possible justification for banning such close family members from the United States without exception.
Exemptions are allowed for certain immigrants, including current legal permanent residents and anyone currently inside the US, among several other categories.
Also, there are new limits on spouses, minor children, adoptees, and parents of adult US citizens. Unlike fiancé(e)s of US citizens from the “full ban” countries and spouses and minor children of green card holders, these “exempt family” (150,000 over four years) are technically not subject to the ban. However, they are subject to a new evidentiary standard:
Normally, the standard is the preponderance of the evidence, meaning that the consular officer should accept whatever the available evidence suggests. Now, spouses, minor children, and parents of US citizens will have to provide more evidence than is usually required. This specific ban could be much more severe than it seems at the moment.
Another exemption applies to athletic team members for major sporting events. This exemption is necessary because the United States is hosting the World Cup (2026) and Olympics (2028), but the failure to include fans in the exemption is a direct violation of the promises made by the US (during the first Trump administration) when it won the right to host these games. In his 2018 letter to FIFA requesting to host the World Cup, Trump said, “all eligible athletes, officials and fans from all countries around the world would be able to enter the United States without discrimination.” With the new ban, the US has proven itself an unreliable international actor, jeopardizing these opportunities in the future.
In March, the US Chairman of the 2028 Olympics organizing committee said: “America will be open and accepting to all 209 countries for the Olympics… We will welcome the people from the around the world.” The United States has proven itself an unreliable international actor, jeopardizing these opportunities in the future.
The flimsy justification
The primary justification for this unprecedented restriction on legal immigration is that it is not possible to screen immigrants from these countries effectively because their governments do not share sufficient information about them. Therefore, the US must adopt this ban to “protect its citizens from terrorist attacks and other national security or public-safety threats,” reads the proclamation.
1. Current law already addresses cases of insufficient information. Every immigrant visa applicant has the burden of proof to demonstrate that they qualify for a visa. If they are unable to prove who they are and their eligibility for the visa, they are already banned. The only people who get visas from these countries are people whose backgrounds are carefully documented for the US government. Consular officers denied 55 percent of B visas for business travelers and other visitors in FY 2024 for immigrants, compared to about 25 percent for the rest of the world. It is shocking that President Trump would claim that consular officers are not doing their jobs without any evidence.
2. The actual policy undermines the claim that this is about foreign government information sharing and a lack of information on applicants:
- The ban applies to nationals living outside the targeted country. However, the president implies at different points that this is a ban on travel “from” these places. It is not a place-based ban. This is a nationality-based restriction. Nothing exempts a national from one of these countries from these restrictions if they have never lived under the government, which Trump says does not provide the requisite information. For instance, Iranians acquire Iranian citizenship through their fathers, whether they were born in Iran or not. Most countries outside of the Western hemisphere do not have birthright citizenship, so those born abroad would not necessarily receive citizenship of their birth country.
- The ban applies to nationals with travel histories to developed countries, including the United States. The ban also applies to people with extensive travel histories globally, including the United States. Only current visa holders are exempt. People who spent considerable time in the United States are not. Most immigrants to the United States have spent time outside their birth country, and this policy’s refusal to account for that demonstrates that they want to exclude people regardless of their background. According to the United Nations, 38 million nationals from these countries live outside of their home country.
3. The president provides no evidence connecting these nationalities to any threats, past or current.
4. The evidence shows this ban isn’t targeting security threats. Based on Alex Nowrasteh’s extensive research on the backgrounds of foreign-born terrorists, we can say that nationals from the fully and partially banned countries account for just 0.2 percent of all foreign-born terrorist deaths in the last 50 years. Only one deadly attack has occurred since 1981.
5. Getting rid of the last travel ban did not result in terrorist attacks. Trump has said that his previous ban prevented attacks, but there were no attacks by the eight nationalities targeted by the last ban. And when President Biden correctly ended those bans, there were no attacks, proving that the entire premise was false. In fact, throughout President Biden’s administration, there were no deadly foreign-born terrorist attacks for the first time for any administration since 1975.
6. Visa overstays don’t justify the ban. The proclamation discusses visa overstay rates based on the Department of Homeland Security’s Visa Overstay Report. The data on which the proclamation relies is both old and unreliable. The overstay rates it uses are two years out of date, and the department’s overstay report has repeatedly been shown not to reflect the actual number of visa overstays accurately. This is because the government does a poor job of tracking temporary visitors when they leave the country or apply for a new status, leading to inflated counts of overstays. In any case, overstays do not demonstrate any unique security threat from these countries. President Trump says that the ban is necessary because of visa overstay terrorist attacks, but no visa overstay from these countries has killed anyone in a terrorist attack in the last half century. Moreover, all 19 countries are facing immigrant visa bans for permanent residents. It makes no sense to cite overstays to justify this ban on all legal immigration.
7. There is no consistent application of the ban’s criteria. For instance, eight countries do not face any restrictions despite high overstay rates. Djibouti, Liberia, Bhutan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, Malawi, the Gambia, and Benin all have overstay rates higher than Afghanistan, yet don’t face any bans or restrictions from this proclamation. The anomalies could be explained by foreign policy considerations, as the proclamation states, information unavailable to the public, or the random policy gyrations so common during this administration. Moreover, 90 percent of visa overstays are not from the banned countries.
8. The exceptions undermine the purported justification for the ban.
- Delayed proclamation: The government report on these supposed foreign government information-sharing deficiencies was completed, according to the proclamation, in April, yet no action was taken by the president until June. This undercuts any assertion that there is any urgency to the ban or that the delay will cause any harm to the public.
- Delayed effective date: Between June 5 and June 8, the government will continue to vet and issue visas under regular protocols as if nothing unusual is happening. How can the administration possibly justify delaying this crucial policy that is supposedly necessary to save American lives? It can’t.
- Exemption for current visa holders: The government graciously exempts all current visa holders from the ban. That is certainly better than the alternative, but it demonstrates that the government does not really believe that these visas were issued improperly to security threats. These people will be able to travel to the United States as if people from these countries aren’t actual threats.
- Exemption for foreign government officials: After spending pages talking about how these foreign governments are such an enormous problem, can’t vet their own people, and participate in terrorism, the president proceeds to exempt all officials from these countries from the ban. How does this make sense? It is worth noting that the last deadly terrorist attack in the United States happened in 2019 under President Trump by someone entering on a diplomatic visa from Saudi Arabia. Trump had let them in to undergo training as part of an arms shipment to one of the world’s most evil governments. The irony is that under Trump, the persecutors get visas, while their persecuted people get bans.
9. Cutting legal immigration will not stop illegal immigration. In justifying a total ban on Haitians, President Trump states that “hundreds of thousands of illegal Haitian aliens flooded into the United States during the Biden Administration.” This is untrue. Barely 50,000 crossed illegally and were not immediately expelled from FY 2021 to FY 2024. Those crossings all occurred when ports of entry were closed. Once ports of entry were reopened to legal entries, Haitians returned to crossing legally. Shutting down legal immigration for Haitians will not result in less illegal immigration.
Despite what President Trump believes, immigrants from these countries do contribute to a safer and more prosperous America.
Conclusion
The title of Trump’s proclamation is “Restricting the Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats.” However, the proclamation also states, “I considered foreign policy, national security, and counterterrorism goals” when determining which countries to ban and to what extent. In other words, the basis is whatever the administration wants.
In its infinite wisdom, the Supreme Court in 2018 gave every American president unlimited power to ban immigrants from anywhere with the stroke of a pen and the invocation of a few magic words. The Trump administration’s justifications for the proclamation won’t be revealed, and even if they were found to be entirely illogical, it wouldn’t make a legal difference under current precedent. The justifications for the travel ban will forever remain mysterious, just like the biggest mystery of all: What took Trump so long to act? We will never know for sure, but the security justifications provided don’t cut it.