Trump issues travel ban on 12 countries

President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House on Jan. 20, 2025. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump issued a long-awaited “travel ban” late Wednesday to bar entry of nationals from a dozen countries and partially restrict entry for nationals from a smaller set of countries.

Countries that will have a full ban are Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Countries with partial bans are Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

The proclamation goes into effect Monday.

Wednesday’s proclamation is a modified version of the travel ban from the president’s first term that barred entrance to nationals from predominantly Muslim countries. Federal courts struck down several versions of the travel ban until the Supreme Court upheld it in 2018. Former president Joe Biden repealed the travel ban when he came into office in 2021.

Wednesday’s proclamation allows for some exceptions, including visas that were issued to people from those countries before Wednesday, those who have been granted asylum by the U.S. or have a refugee status and lawful permanent residents.

The president’s proclamation cited national security concerns, but gave little detail on the reasoning that led to selecting the countries.

“Publicly disclosing additional details on which I relied in making these determinations, however, would cause serious damage to the national security of the United States, and many such details are classified,” according to the proclamation.

The Trump administration has moved to end temporary legal status such as humanitarian protections for nationals that hail from some of the countries on the ban list: Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela. Immigration advocates have challenged those moves to end those legal protections in federal courts across the country.