US President Donald Trump on Tuesday added Burkina Faso, Laos, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and Syria as well as Palestinian Authority passport holders to a full travel ban. The decision to include Syria, a country Trump has moved to rehabilitate internationally, came days after three US nationals were killed in an attack in the central town of Palmyra.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday expanded a US travel ban by barring nationals of seven more countries including Syria, as well as Palestinian Authority passport holders, from entering the United States.
Trump, who has long campaigned to restrict immigration and has spoken in increasingly strident terms, moved to ban foreigners who “intend to threaten” Americans, the White House said.
He also wants to prevent foreigners in the United States who would “undermine or destabilize its culture, government, institutions or founding principles,” a White House proclamation said.
Trump’s move comes days after two US troops and a civilian were killed in Syria, which Trump has moved to rehabilitate internationally since the fall of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad.
Syrian authorities said the perpetrator was a member of the security forces who was due to be dismissed for “extremist Islamist ideas.”
The Trump administration had already informally barred travel from Palestinian Authority passport holders as it acts in solidarity with Israel against the recognition of a Palestinian state by other leading Western countries including France and Britain.
Other countries newly subjected to the full travel ban came from some of Africa’s poorest countries – Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone and South Sudan – as well as Laos in southeast Asia.
In a series of new actions, the White House said that Trump was also imposing partial travel restrictions on citizens of other African countries including the most populous, Nigeria, as well as Black-majority Caribbean nations.
Trump in recent weeks has used increasingly loaded languages in denouncing African-origin immigrants.
At a rally last week he said that the United States was only taking people from “shithole countries” and instead should seek immigrants from Norway and Sweden.
