Trump administration mulls new travel ban that could affect 43 nations, including Pakistan: NYT

US President Donald Trump‘s administration is mulling a new travel ban that is expected to affect citizens from dozens of countries, including Pakistan, to varying degrees, according to a report in The New York Times.

The report said the US government’s draft list featured 43 countries, divided into three categories of travel restrictions.

The first group of 10 countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Cuba and North Korea, among others, would be set for a full visa suspension, according to an internal memo.

In the second group, five countries – Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar and South Sudan – would face partial suspensions that would affect tourist and student visas as well as other immigrant visas, with some exceptions.

In the third group, a total of 26 countries including Pakistan, Belarus and Turkmenistan, among others, would be considered for a partial suspension of US visa issuance if their governments “do not make efforts to address deficiencies within 60 days”, the memo said.

The list has yet to be approved by the administration, including the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and could be amended, officials told the Times.

The memo follows an executive order issued on 20 January that requires intensified security vetting of any foreigners seeking admission to the US to detect national security threats, and directed several cabinet members to submit a list of countries for partial or full suspension because their “vetting and screening information is so deficient”.

Fourteen months earlier, after an Islamic State-inspired mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, Trump had called for “a total and complete” shutdown of Muslims entering the US “until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on”.

A new set of restrictions, outlined in the memo, would follow pledges by the president to institute an immigration crackdown. In October 2023, Trump pledged to restrict people from the Gaza Strip, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and “anywhere else that threatens our security”.

Any move to ban or restrict immigration from the list of 43 countries would come in tandem with Department of Homeland Security efforts to deport undocumented migrants affiliated with newly identified terrorist crime networks, including Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, El Salvador’s MS-13 and the Mexican-American 18th St.