Trump reveals all 19 countries now under 'immigration freeze' as White House prepare to expand travel ban
Topics: Donald Trump, Immigration, News, US News
Niamh Shackleton
Featured Image Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Topics: Donald Trump, Immigration, News, US News
Donald Trump has announced that citizens from 19 countries will all have their US immigration applications frozen.
Trump has been clamping down on immigration ever since he returned to the White House at the beginning of the year for his second term, but he's since upped the ante following last week's shooting in Washington, D.C.
The shooting took place a few blocks away from the Capitol and resulted in a National Guard member losing their life. A second was left in critical condition and remains in hopsital.
The gunman is believed to be 29-year-old Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal. He legally entered the US in 2021 under Joe Biden's administration.
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Lakanwal has pleaded not guilty to murder and assault charges.
After the shooting, which some believe to have been terror-related, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it had halted requests from people wanting to come to America from Afghanistan 'effective immediately'.
Now this has been expanded to a total of 19 countries, citing national security and public safety concerns.
As well as Afghanistan, immigration applications from the following countries are being frozen, says CNN: Burma (Myanmar), Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.
There's a chance that this number will increase to a staggering 30 countries, should US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem get her way.
On December 1, Noem declared that she'd suggested a full travel ban 'on every damn country that's been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies'.
USCIS Director Joseph Edlow echoed similar sentiments in late November after the Washington shooting on November 26.
Edlow said in a statement the following day: "My primary responsibility is to ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible. This includes an assessment of where they are coming from and why."
He continued: "Yesterday’s horrific events make it abundantly clear the Biden administration spent the last four years dismantling basic vetting and screening standards, prioritizing the rapid resettlement of aliens from high-risk countries over the safety of American citizens.
"The Trump administration takes the opposite approach. Effective immediately, I am issuing new policy guidance that authorizes USCIS officers to consider country-specific factors as significant negative factors when reviewing immigration requests.
"American lives come first."
According to USCIS data the recent move could affect more than 1.4m people who have pending asylum applications, Sky News reports.