GENEVA – Last month, US President Donald Trump banned or severely restricted nationals of 20 extra international locations from getting into the United States, increasing the entry restrictions he put in place in June, supposedly to mitigate “national security and public safety threats.” But a cursory look on the record of focused international locations makes clear that that is simply one other case of ethnonationalist politics dressed up as an anti-terrorism measure.
Many of the countries Trump targeted in 2025 – including Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Haiti, Laos, Malawi, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tonga, Zambia, and Zimbabwe – have virtually no history of exporting transnational terrorism. But a large share of them – 16 out of the 20 announced last month and 26 of the 39 targeted in 2025 – are in Africa. The apparent conclusion, particularly in mild of Trump’s wider agenda and rhetoric, is that racial bias is informing US coverage, a lot as spiritual bias guided his first administration’s 2017 restrictions on journey and resettlement from seven Muslim-majority international locations.
To make certain, US officers say their decisions mirror “demonstrated, persistent, and severe deficiencies in screening, vetting, and information-sharing,” in addition to standards like visa-overstay charges and even refusal to simply accept US deportation flights. But these justifications are extra improvised than airtight. For instance, because the American Immigration Council observes, the Trump administration is utilizing non-immigrant overstay charges to justify bans on immigrant visas.
Moreover, very like Trump’s tariffs, the factors are being selectively utilized, with some countries, equivalent to Egypt and Kuwait, going through no new restrictions, regardless of excessive overstay charges, documented information-sharing, and vetting deficiencies. Even international locations with longstanding hyperlinks to international jihadism, equivalent to Pakistan and Qatar, are being spared, regardless of Trump’s declare to be motivated by national-security concerns. Saudi Arabia belongs to each teams, but it has by no means been focused by Trump.
Some of those privileged international locations are nearly actually harmful. What they’ve in widespread just isn’t that they’re secure, however that they’re helpful. Countries like Egypt and Iraq are thought-about strategically indispensable. Saudi Arabia just isn’t solely a key US protection accomplice; it’s, like Qatar, a serious investor within the US – and within the investment firm of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Pakistan signed a serious funding take care of World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency agency majority-owned by the Trump household, as a part of its aggressive courtship of the US administration. It’s a method that by no means fails to repay: No nation that hosts a serious Trump-branded property or has struck a high-profile enterprise take care of a member of Trump’s interior circle faces US journey restrictions.
A telling instance of this sample is that whereas the Trump administration tightened restrictions on many international locations, it lifted its pre-existing ban on non-immigrant visas for Turkmenistan, which has supposedly made “significant progress in improving its identity-management and information-sharing procedures.” Conspicuously, the choice got here just some weeks after the reclusive, gas-rich nation agreed to cooperate with the US on vitality and important minerals, and to contemplate granting preferential therapy to US companies.
This lesson is obvious: international locations which have sturdy private ties to the Trump administration or profitable enterprise relationships along with his household and cronies obtain favorable therapy. The boundary between US public workplace and personal achieve has by no means been so porous, with Trump’s enterprise empire expanding rapidly since his return to the presidency.
The result’s absurd. A citizen of Burkina Faso, a rustic with no historical past of threatening US safety, is barred from getting into the nation, however a nationwide of Bangladesh, which is beset by Islamist violence and anti-American extremism, just isn’t. This incongruity undermines the credibility of US diplomacy and counterterrorism efforts, because it sends a harmful message to states that sponsor or tolerate extremism: accountability is negotiable.
If Trump truly wished to guard the US from terrorism, he would pursue a strategy primarily based on credible intelligence and constant requirements. He would acknowledge that worldwide terrorism just isn’t confined to weak or remoted states; quite the opposite, a few of its most prolific enablers are regional powers. And he would reveal a willingness to confront US companions and adversaries alike.
Unfortunately, for all of Trump’s discuss safety, he has confirmed way more fascinated with lining his personal pockets. His newest journey restrictions are a case examine in how the language of nationwide safety may be repurposed for coercive diplomacy and personal achieve.
In a way, this was the pure evolution of the “America First” ethos. The idea was at all times supposed to justify a transactional approach to worldwide engagement. But throughout Trump’s second presidency, it has ascended to a better stage of cynicism. Now, those that fail to supply ample choices for Trump are punished, whereas those that show themselves helpful to him can act just about with impunity – US nationwide safety be damned.