President Trump added new countries to his general travel ban on Tuesday and added restrictions to some travel from other nations, saying the country conditions make it too dangerous to allow unfettered admission.
He also barred people from entering on travel documents issued by the Palestinian Authority, the governing body for the Israel-occupied West Bank territory.
The restrictions are part of a tightening wall of restrictions the president has issued to limit entry from nations he deems to present some sort of danger to the U.S.
New nations added to the full travel ban are Burkina Faso, Laos, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Syria. They join Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, which were already on the list.
The nations added to the partial restrictions list are Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Dominica, Gabon, the Gambia, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
They join Burundi, Cuba, Togo and Venezuela on the restricted list. The restrictions largely bar entry of those coming on business, tourist and student visitor visas, but still allow immigrant visa holders to enter.
“The United States must exercise extreme vigilance during the visa-issuance and immigration processes to identify, prior to their admission or entry into the United States, foreign nationals who intend to harm Americans or our national interests,” Mr. Trump said in a proclamation.
His ban expands on one of his marquee policies from his first term, the travel ban, derided by critics as a “Muslim ban” because of the heavy focus on some majority-Muslim nations.
Initial versions were rejected by federal courts, but by the time his third version reached the Supreme Court, the justices said it met muster, given the president’s expansive national security and foreign policy powers to restrict entry to the U.S.
Mr. Trump’s proclamation delivered extensive justifications for his decision-making, lending legal heft to the list of countries he included.
He pointed to criminal and terrorism cases involving nationals of some of the countries, while in other cases, he cited poor record-keeping that makes it difficult for the U.S. to have any certainty about the identities of those who seek to enter.
And he cited some nations for their high rates of overstaying their visas — essentially becoming illegal immigrants here.
“To faithfully uphold United States immigration law, the flow of foreigners from countries with high overstay rates or significant fraud must stop,” the president said.
The decision comes amid a new focus on migrants and terrorism, after an Afghan evacuee was charged with the shooting ambush of National Guard troops in Washington last month.
One soldier was killed and another gravely wounded.
Mr. Trump’s expansion of the travel restrictions won praise from some in the GOP.
“This is what being America first looks like,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, Alabama Republican, said on social media.
But Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Michigan Democrat, called it “racist cruelty.”
“Trump and Stephen Miller won’t be satisfied until our country has the demographics of a Klan rally,” she said. Mr. Miller is Mr. Trump’s deputy chief of staff, and is Jewish — a demographic targeted by the Ku Klux Klan.
