On Sunday, an Egyptian man who was denied a visa in 2005 and overstayed a visa he got in 2022 only to be given a work permit under former President Joe Biden’s administration, attacked a group of Jewish activists in Boulder, Colorado, injuring a dozen with a flamethrower and Molotov cocktails.
On Wednesday evening, President Donald Trump announced that he would fully ban visitors from a dozen countries from arriving on visas to the United States, saying they could not be “properly vetted” given current systems. A further seven countries would see heightened restrictions.
Naturally, the same people who were busy coming up with euphemisms like “Gaza-hostage-awareness protesters” for “Jews” in Boulder were calling common-sense vetting “racist.” Except they have no one to blame but themselves — and, as one of the left’s favorite social media personages pointed out, nobody really cares that much about a travel ban anymore, not after we’ve seen what it hath wrought.
“In the 21st century, we’ve seen one terror attack after another carried out by foreign-visa overstayers from dangerous places all over the world,” Trump said in the video announcing the policy.
“And, thanks to Biden’s open-door policies, today, there are millions and millions of these illegals who should not be in our country.
“In my first term, my powerful travel restrictions were one of our most successful policies, and they were a key part of preventing major foreign terror attacks on American soil,” he continued, noting that “on my first day back in office, I directed the secretary of State to perform a security review of high-risk regions and make recommendations for where restrictions should be imposed.”
Risks included “presence of terrorists, failure to cooperate on visa security, inability to verify travelers’ identities, inadequate record-keeping of criminal histories, and persistently high rates of illegal visa overstays.”
The countries banned when the policy takes effect on Monday, assuming it isn’t blocked by the courts, are Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, according to the Associated Press.
Should Trump expand these entry restrictions?
Further restrictions will be placed on Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.
To a certain extent, pretty much all of these are self-explanatory.
Afghanistan, Iran, and Yemen are hotbeds of terrorist activity. Myanmar and Equatorial Guinea are repressive military juntas where the ruling government is dealing with significant insurgent activity. Haiti is more or less a gang-controlled failed state where a man who goes by the sobriquet “Barbecue” — not for his skill at cookouts, but for his problematic penchant for burning his enemies alive — still holds significant sway over national politics, despite the nominal government’s best efforts. And some of these (Eritrea, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Venezuela) manage to fit under two or even three of these categories.
After a record-number of illegal immigrants flooded the country under Joe Biden’s administration, this is pretty much the common-sense move you make after someone who overstayed a visa and spent a year allegedly planning an attack because he “wanted to kill all Zionist people” — or “Gaza-hostage-awareness protesters,” to again use NBC News’ sadly memorable euphemism for “Jews” — but leave it to the Democrats to bray about this being “racist.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, for instance, said that this was “[j]ust like his first Muslim ban” — which is curious, because 1) the courts decided that wasn’t a “Muslim ban” and 2) boy, he missed the mark if he was trying for that, including overwhelmingly Christian Equatorial Guinea and Haiti on the list.
“This discriminatory policy is beyond shameful,” Omar said on X, adding “this latest announcement flies in the face of basic morality and goes directly against our values.
“This racist policy will not make us safe, it will separate families and endanger lives. We cannot let it stand.”
This discriminatory policy is beyond shameful.
Just like his first Muslim Ban, this latest announcement flies in the face of basic morality and goes directly against our values.
This racist policy will not make us safe, it will separate families and endanger lives. We cannot… https://t.co/7n5CutqYMU
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) June 5, 2025
California Sen. Adam Schiff, meanwhile, didn’t specifically call it “racist,” just general-issue “bigotry.”
“This is Trump’s reckless first term travel ban all over again,” he said.
“Just like before, Trump’s expanded ban on travelers from around the world will not improve our national security and will only further isolate the U.S. from the rest of world.
“Bigotry is not a national security strategy,” he said in closing.
This is Trump’s reckless first term travel ban all over again.
Just like before, Trump’s expanded ban on travelers from around the world will not improve our national security and will only further isolate the U.S. from the rest of world.
Bigotry is not a national security…
— Adam Schiff (@SenAdamSchiff) June 5, 2025
Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, meanwhile, took a different tack, appearing on Jen Psaki’s MSNBC show to say that “the whole game” wasn’t really a travel ban, but “to steal from us” by, um, passing a budget bill:
Not a coincidence Trump announced his travel ban tonight.
He’s trying to distract us from the core story. And the core story is their bill to throw 15 million people off their health care in order to give a $270,000 tax cut to the richest Americans. pic.twitter.com/aa1W3W4lMp
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) June 5, 2025
That’s a cool parlor trick. Let me try: “This isn’t about a travel ban. That’s the whole game! This is about eroding women’s right to abortion.” See? It works for any Democratic agenda line-item. Neat!
The lefty who got it most right, however, was clip-meister Aaron Rupar, who posted this:
worth remembering that when Trump announced a travel ban in 2017, people literally went to airports to protest. Eight years later, Trump announces a new one and it’s not even front page news.
We’re the frogs and the water is getting awfully hot.
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 5, 2025
Yeah, funny how that happened. Not only is #TheResistance exhausted, we figured out that this approach to illegal immigration and problematic visitor visas … actually works.
It’s worth noting that as of early Thursday morning Eastern Time, the X accounts of several front-runners for the 2028 presidential nomination — former Vice President Kamala Harris, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — hadn’t posted a word about this travel ban.
Those above were three of the highest-profile Democrats railing against it on social media Wednesday night into Thursday morning; the only poster I’ve heard mentioned as even having an outside shot at the presidency in 2028 is Murphy, who’s running a low-key, dark-horse campaign on wonky opposition to the Trump administration and hoping the bigger names don’t enter or take each other out.
In other words, nobody on the left may like Trump’s travel ban — but if they’re going to try to get into the White House, they’re sure as heck not going to rush to condemn it just days after a visa-overstay terrorist tried to mass-murder Jews in Colorado. When even AOC knows better than to be the vanguard of that opposition, they know this is all a quagmire of their own making.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
