Washington, DC – Civil rights advocates in the United States are raising the alarm over a directive signed by President Donald Trump that they say lays the groundwork for another travel ban targeting Muslim-majority countries.The executive order, released on Monday, may also be used to target foreign nationals who are already in the US legally and crack down on international students who advocate for Palestinian rights, experts say.
Deepa Alagesan, a lawyer at the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), an advocacy group, said the new order is “bigger and worse” than the “xenophobic” travel ban that Trump imposed on several Muslim-majority countries in 2017 during his first term.
“The worst part of it now, it’s looking to not just ban people outside the US entering the US, but also to use these same rationales as a basis to get people out of the US,” Alagesan told Al Jazeera.
The new order directs administration officials to compile a list of nations “for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries”. Advertisement
It goes further, however. It calls for identifying the number of citizens who entered the US from those countries since 2021 — during Joe Biden’s presidency — and collecting “relevant” information about their “actions and activities”.
The White House then orders “immediate steps” to deport foreign citizens from those countries “whenever information is identified that would support the exclusion or removal”.
Trump’s executive order also says the administration must ensure that foreign citizens, including those in the US, “do not bear hostile attitudes” towards American cit …