The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it will suspend all immigration applications for people from 19 “high-risk” countries, effective immediately. Within 90 days, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) must draft a prioritized list of immigrants for review and, if necessary, removal—including those seeking green card requests or citizenship applications.
U.S. President Donald Trump issued a sweeping travel ban in June that barred nationals from 12 countries (Afghanistan, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen) from entering the United States and placed restrictions on nationals from seven others (Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela).
The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it will suspend all immigration applications for people from 19 “high-risk” countries, effective immediately. Within 90 days, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) must draft a prioritized list of immigrants for review and, if necessary, removal—including those seeking green card requests or citizenship applications.
U.S. President Donald Trump issued a sweeping travel ban in June that barred nationals from 12 countries (Afghanistan, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen) from entering the United States and placed restrictions on nationals from seven others (Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela).
At the time, no action was taken against immigrants already in the United States. But with Tuesday’s new mandate, all immigrants from these countries will now face greater scrutiny—even if they arrived before the travel ban was in place.
USCIS’s order is the latest U.S. crackdown on immigration following last week’s shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., one of whom was killed. The suspect, who has pleaded not guilty to murder, was an Afghan national who entered the United States legally during the Biden administration and was granted asylum in April, during Trump’s second term. In response, Washington announced that it would prioritize the deportation of Afghan citizens who were previously ordered to leave the country.
Also last week, USCIS stated that it would reexamine green card applications for people from countries “of concern,” pause all asylum requests, and halt visas for Afghans who assisted U.S. forces during the Afghanistan War. Such pauses could affect more than 1.5 million people with pending asylum applications and another 50,000 individuals who received asylum grants during former U.S. President Joe Biden’s term.
Read more in today’s World Brief: U.S. Suspends All Immigration Requests From 19 ‘High-Risk’ Countries.
This post is part of FP’s ongoing coverage of the Trump administration. Follow along here.
