Noman Sabit: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the Trump administration is planning to expand its travel ban to more than 30 countries in the wake of a deadly shooting against National Guardsmen.
“I won’t be specific on the number, but it’s over 30, and the President is continuing to evaluate countries,” Noem said Thursday evening in an appearance on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle.”
“Listen, if they don’t have a stable government there, if they don’t have a country that can sustain itself and tell us who those individuals are and help us vet them, why should we allow people from that country to come here to the United States,” she told host Laura Ingraham.
The Trump administration has already banned travel from 19 different countries it has deemed a security and public safety threat: Afghanistan, Burundi, Chad, Cuba, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Myanmar, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela and Yemen.
Noem would not confirm the number posed by Ingraham, who asked whether the list would rise to 32 countries.
President Trump has taken sweeping immigration actions in the wake of the National Guard shooting in Washington late last month, after he pledged to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries.”
The administration has paused all pending asylum applications for those from across the globe seeking refuge in the U.S. And for those from the 19 countries already covered by the travel ban, Trump has said he would pause review of their immigration cases and threatened to revoke their green cards.
He also suggested the U.S. would not issue any visas to citizens of Afghanistan — the home country of alleged shooter Rahmanullah Lakanwal — in a move that effectively shuts off the pathway for those who assisted U.S. military efforts to leave the country under the Biden administration.
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