Donald Trump has slapped new travel restrictions on citizens from
North Korea, Venezuela and Chad, expanding to eight the list of
countries covered by his original travel bans that have been derided by
critics and challenged in court.
Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia were left on the list of
affected countries in a new proclamation issued by the president on
Sunday. Restrictions on citizens from Sudan were lifted.
The measures help fulfil a campaign promise Mr Trump made to make it
harder to migrate to the US. Unlike the president's original bans, which
had time limits, this one is open-ended
"Making
America Safe is my number one priority. We will not admit those into
our country we cannot safely vet," Mr Trump tweeted shortly after the
proclamation was released.
Iraqi citizens will not be subject to travel prohibitions but will face enhanced scrutiny or vetting.
The current ban, enacted in March, was set to expire on Sunday
evening. The new restrictions are due to take effect on October 18 and
resulted from a review after Trump's original travel bans sparked
international outrage and legal challenges.
The addition of North Korea and Venezuela broadens the restrictions from the original, mostly Muslim-majority list.
Critics have accused the Republican president of discriminating
against Muslims in violation of constitutional guarantees of religious
liberty and equal protection under the law, breaking existing
US immigration law and stoking religious hatred.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which is one of the organisations
challenging Mr Trump’s original travel ban, described it as a new
"Muslim ban" - a description the president has rejected - adding the
addition of North Korea did not change that.
ACLU executive director Anthony D Romero said: "Six of President
Trump's targeted countries are Muslim. The fact that Trump has added
North Korea — with few visitors to the US — and a few government
officials from Venezuela doesn't obfuscate the real fact that the
administration's order is still a Muslim ban.
"President Trump's original sin of targeting Muslims cannot be cured by throwing other countries onto his enemies list.”
An administration official, briefing reporters on a conference call,
acknowledged that the number of North Koreans now travelling to the
United States was very low.
Rights group Amnesty International USA also condemned the measures.
"Just because the original ban was especially outrageous does not
mean we should stand for yet another version of government-sanctioned
discrimination," it said in a statement.
"It is senseless and cruel to ban whole nationalities of people who
are often fleeing the very same violence that the US government wishes
to keep out. This must not be normalised."
The White House portrayed the restrictions as consequences for
countries that did not meet new requirements for vetting of immigrants
and issuing of visas. Those requirements were shared in July with
foreign governments, which had 50 days to make improvements if needed,
the White House said.
A number of countries made improvements by enhancing the security of
travel documents or the reporting of passports that were lost or stolen.
Others did not, sparking the restrictions.
The announcement came as the US Supreme Court prepares to hear oral
arguments on Oct. 10 over the legality of Mr Trump's previous travel
ban, including whether it discriminated against Muslims.
Mr Trump has threatened to "destroy" North Korea if it attacks the
United States or its allies. Pyongyang earlier this month conducted its
most powerful nuclear bomb test. The president has also directed harsh
criticism at Venezuela, once hinting at a potential military option to
deal with Caracas.
But the officials described the addition of the two countries to Mr
Trump's travel restrictions as the result of a purely objective review.
In the case of North Korea, where the suspension was sweeping and
applied to both immigrants and non-immigrants, officials said it was
hard for the United States to validate the identity of someone coming
from North Korea or to find out if that person was a threat.
"North Korea, quite bluntly, does not cooperate whatsoever," one official said.
The restrictions on Venezuela focused on Socialist government
officials that the Trump administration blamed for the country's slide
into economic disarray, including officials from the Bolivarian National
Intelligence Service and their immediate families.
Mr Trump received a set of policy recommendations on Friday from
acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke and was briefed on the
matter by other administration officials, including Attorney General
Jeff Sessions and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a White House aide
said.
The rollout on Sunday was decidedly more organised than Trump's first
stab at a travel ban, which was unveiled with little warning and
sparked protests at airports worldwide.
Earlier on Sunday, Mr Trump told reporters about the ban: "The tougher, the better."
Rather than a total ban on entry to the United States, the proposed
restrictions differ by nation, based on cooperation with American
security mandates, the threat the United States believes each country
presents and other variables, officials said.
Somalis, for example, are barred from entering the United States as immigrants and subjected to greater screening for visits.
After the September 15 bombing attack on a London Tube train, Mr
Trump wrote on Twitter that the new ban "should be far larger, tougher
and more specific - but stupidly, that would not be politically
correct."
The expiring ban blocked entry into the United States by people from
the six countries for 90 days and locked out most aspiring refugees for
120 days to give Mr Trump's administration time to conduct a worldwide
review of US vetting procedures for foreign visitors.
Some federal courts blocked the ban, but the US Supreme Court allowed it to take effect in June with some restrictions.
