The Trump administration on June 4, 2025, introduced journey restrictions focusing on 19 nations in Africa and Asia, together with lots of the world’s poorest nations. All journey is banned from 12 of those nations, with partial restrictions on journey from the remaining.
The presidential proclamation, entitled “Restricting the Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats,” is aimed toward “countries throughout the world for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a full or partial suspension on the entry or admission of nationals from those countries.”
In a video that accompanied the proclamation, President Donald Trump mentioned: “The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado, has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted.”
The most recent journey ban reimposes restrictions on lots of the nations that had been included on journey bans in Trump’s first time period, together with a number of new nations.
However this journey ban, like the sooner ones, is not going to considerably enhance nationwide safety and public security in america. That’s as a result of migrants account for a minuscule portion of violence within the U.S. And migrants from the newest journey ban nations account for a good smaller portion, in keeping with knowledge that I’ve collected. The suspect in Colorado, for instance, is from Egypt, which isn’t on the journey ban listing.
As a scholar of political sociology, I don’t consider Trump’s newest journey ban is about nationwide safety. Quite, I’d argue, it’s primarily about utilizing nationwide safety as an excuse to disclaim visas to nonwhite candidates.
Terrorism and public security
Prior to now 5 years, the U.S. has witnessed greater than 100,000 homicides. Political violence by militias and different ideological actions accounted for 354 fatalities, in keeping with an initiative generally known as the Armed Battle Location & Occasion Knowledge, which tracks armed battle world wide. That’s lower than 1% of the nation’s murder victims. And international terrorism accounted for lower than 1% of this 1%, in keeping with my knowledge.
The Trump administration says the U.S. can not appropriately vet visa candidates in nations with uncooperative governments or underdeveloped safety techniques. That declare is fake.
The State Division and different authorities businesses do a radical job of vetting visa candidates, even in nations the place there is no such thing as a U.S. embassy, in keeping with an evaluation by the CATO Institute.
The U.S. authorities has subtle strategies for figuring out potential threats. They embrace detailed documentation necessities, interviews with consular officers and clearance by nationwide safety businesses. And it rejects greater than 1 in 6 visa functions, with ever-increasing procedures for detecting fraud.
Members of the Yemeni group and others wave American and Yemeni flags as they collect on the steps of Brooklyn’s Borough Corridor to protest President Donald Trump’s first journey ban on Feb. 2, 2017, in New York.
AP Picture/Kathy Willens
The thoroughness of the visa assessment course of is obvious within the numbers.
Approved foreign-born residents of the U.S. are far much less probably than U.S.-born residents to interact in prison exercise. And unauthorized migrants are even much less more likely to commit crimes. Communities with extra migrants – licensed and unauthorized – have related or barely decrease crime charges than communities with fewer migrants.
If vetting had been as poor as Trump’s government order claims, we might anticipate to see a major variety of terrorist plots from nations on the journey ban listing. However we don’t.
Of the 4 million U.S. residents from the 2017 journey ban nations, I’ve documented solely 4 who had been concerned in violent extremism prior to now 5 years.
Two of them had been arrested after plotting with undercover legislation enforcement brokers. One was discovered to have lied on his asylum utility. One was an Afghan man who killed three Pakistani Shiite Muslim immigrants in New Mexico in 2022.
Such a handful of zealots with rifles or selfmade explosives might be life-altering for victims and their households, however they don’t characterize a risk to U.S. nationwide safety.
Degrading the idea of nationwide safety
Trump has been attempting for years to show immigration right into a nationwide safety difficulty.
In his first main speech on nationwide safety in 2016, Trump targeted on the “dysfunctional immigration system which does not permit us to know who we let into our country.”
His major instance was an act of terrorism by a person who was born within the U.S.
The primary Trump administration’s nationwide safety technique, issued in December 2017, prioritized jihadist terrorist organizations that “radicalize isolated individuals” as “the most dangerous threat to the Nation” – not armies, not one other 9/11, however remoted people.
If the journey ban shouldn’t be actually going to enhance nationwide safety or public security, then what’s it about?
Protesters wave indicators throughout an indication in opposition to President Donald Trump’s revised journey ban on Could 15, 2017, in Seattle.
AP Picture/Ted S. Warren
Linking immigration to nationwide safety appears to serve two long-standing Trump priorities. First is his effort to make American extra white, consistent with widespread bias amongst his supporters in opposition to nonwhite immigrants.
Bear in mind Trump’s insults to Mexicans and Muslims in his escalator speech asserting his presidential marketing campaign in 2015. He has additionally expressed a desire for white immigrants from Norway in 2018 and South Africa in 2025.
Trump has repeatedly related himself with nationalists who view immigration by nonwhites as a hazard to white supremacy.
Second, invoking nationwide safety permits Trump to pursue this objective with out the necessity for accountability, since Congress and the courts have historically deferred to the chief department on nationwide safety points.
Trump additionally claims nationwide safety justifications for tariffs and different insurance policies that he has declared nationwide emergencies, in a bid to keep away from criticism by the general public and oversight by the opposite branches of presidency.
However this oversight is important in a democratic system to make sure that immigration coverage is predicated on information.
