Noem Pushes for Full Travel Ban on 19 Nations, Igniting Legal Firestorm
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has advocated for a sweeping "full travel ban" on an expanded list of countries, escalating the administration’s aggressive crackdown on legal immigration in the wake of a fatal shooting involving an Afghan national.
Noem's dramatic recommendation, made following a meeting with President Donald Trump, called for a ban on "every damn country that's been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies," according to her post on X. This highly charged rhetoric is a clear signal that the administration intends to broaden its existing restrictions.
The Immediate Restriction
While Noem pushed for an expanded list, the immediate action taken by the administration focuses on nationals from 19 countries that were previously subject to partial or total entry restrictions.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has halted all immigration applications (including Green Card and Naturalization interviews) for individuals born in or holding citizenship from these nations to conduct a "thorough re-review process."
The 19 Countries Subject to Review/Application Pause:
- Afghanistan
- Myanmar (Burma)
- Chad
- Republic of Congo
- Equatorial Guinea
- Eritrea
- Haiti
- Iran
- Libya
- Somalia
- Sudan
- Yemen
- Burundi
- Cuba
- Laos
- Sierra Leone
- Togo
- Turkmenistan
- Venezuela
Implications and Looming Legal Battles
The policy has drawn immediate and fierce criticism from immigration advocates, who are preparing for a looming legal challenge. The move is seen as effectively targeting people based on their nationality, echoing the legal fights that surrounded the administration's initial travel bans.
-
Massive Backlogs and Delays: Immigration attorneys anticipate the mandated "full-scale, rigorous re-examination" of existing Green Cards and all paused applications will plunge the system into a severe state of bureaucracy and delay. Cases that once took months could now be stalled for years, leaving thousands of applicants, including U.S. citizens' family members, in prolonged legal limbo.
-
Sweeping Scrutiny: The DHS memorandum is viewed as a broad mandate, allowing immigration services to consider "country-specific factors" and "other grounds of inadmissibility or ineligibility"—sweeping clauses that critics say permit the denial of applicants on vague, non-standard grounds.
- Impact on Refugees and Asylum: The crackdown is concurrent with other restrictions, including a pause on all asylum decisions for migrants already in the U.S. and a halt on visa issuance for Afghan passport holders, signifying a drastic curtailment of humanitarian immigration channels.
Legal experts contend that basing application halts and Green Card re-examinations solely on a person's country of origin is a form of collective punishment that unfairly subjects individuals who have already undergone standard vetting to renewed, intense scrutiny. The fate of these applicants will now likely be determined in federal court, mirroring the controversial immigration enforcement battles of the past.
