Trump Is Ready to Take ICE Barbie’s Advice on His Travel Ban
President Donald Trump is all for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s plan to exploit the shooting of two National Guard members to expand one of the Trump administration’s most racist policies: the travel ban.
Several US officials said CBS News On Tuesday, Trump’s travel ban would be extended to about 30 countries, up from 19. The Department of Homeland Security also released a statement promising it would announce a series of new additions to Trump’s travel ban “soon.”
The announcement comes just days after an Afghan refugee was accused of shooting two guards just blocks from the White House, prompting the Trump administration to suspend decisions on asylum applications for all nationalities and order a large-scale review of green card cases involving immigrants from the 19 countries currently under the travel ban.
Not only is it unclear why an individual’s alleged actions would require all citizens of a country to be barred from entering the United States, but importantly, Afghanistan is already subject to Trump’s travel ban. Trump’s plot to loop in other countries simply shows how far the administration is willing to go to advance its agenda of vilification and exclusion of immigrants.
It appears that the idea for this latest overtly racist reaction came from Noem, who written the On Monday, she recommended that Trump impose a “total travel ban on all the damn countries that are flooding our nation with killers, leeches and rights junkies.”
“Our ancestors built this nation on blood, sweat, and an unwavering love of freedom – without letting foreign invaders massacre our heroes, drain our hard-earned taxes, or rip off the benefits owed to AMERICANS,” she wrote. “WE DON’T WANT IT. NOT ONLY.”
“ALL THE DAMN COUNTRIES” wrote the official DHS X account, sharing Noem’s sentiment.
The Trump administration also halted all visa and immigration processes for Afghan nationals. The alleged shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwalserved in a paramilitary unit in Afghanistan run by the CIA and trained by American special operations soldiers. He obtained his asylum and his work permit in April This year. So, despite Noem’s anger, it appears that at one point the Trump administration wanted these so-called “foreign invaders.”
Trump’s travel ban currently completely prohibits entry from Afghanistan, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, and partially restricts travel from several other countries, including Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
