The Trump administration is considering expanding President Donald Trump’s new travel ban to as many as 36 additional countries if they do not address various security or diplomatic concerns within two months, according to a June 14 cable reviewed by The New York Times.
Most of the countries are in Africa, while others are in the Caribbean, the Pacific region and Central Asia.
This month, Trump imposed a full ban on entry to the United States on citizens of 12 countries and a partial ban on seven more, reviving a form of a much-disputed policy from his first term.
The cable says that in addition to the 19 countries, the State Department had identified 36 more that must improve on certain benchmarks within 60 days. It set a deadline of 8 p.m. ET Wednesday for the affected governments to provide remediation plans.
The countries in question “must take immediate action to mitigate ongoing vetting and screening concerns, develop corrective action plans to remediate deficiencies and evaluate progress,” the cable said.
The cable did not say what the concerns were in each case.
The categories of concern included a lack of a competent central government that could produce reliable identity documents and criminal records; dubious passport security; significant rates of visa overstays; a lack of cooperation in taking back citizens being deported from the United States; and selling citizenship to people who do not live in their countries.
It also said a country could be subjected to a travel ban if its citizens were involved in terrorism or “antisemitic and anti-American activity in the United States.”
The countries on the new list included Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Ethiopia, Egypt, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, South Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tonga, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The countries whose citizens were fully banned from entering the United States were Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Trump also named seven others whose citizens cannot come to the United States permanently or get tourist or student visas, but can travel for business. They included Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
