Donald Trump’s new travel ban is coming into effect

The executive order banning travel from 12 countries, which comes into effect on June 9th, is more methodical than previous iterations. In his first batch of executive orders, issued on January 20th, President Donald Trump directed several top advisers to compile a list of countries with insufficient screening standards for potential migrants, which they considered to be a national-security risk. The order warned that people from these countries could be barred from coming to America. It was a signal that Mr Trump intended to resurrect the travel ban, one of the most controversial immigration policies of his first term.

Most of the countries targeted in this, the fourth version of the policy, are in the Middle East and Africa. Nationals from seven other countries, including Cuba and Venezuela, face partial restrictions. A country might find itself on the travel-ban list if its citizens tend to overstay their visas; if it has refused to take back deportees; if instability within the country prevents proper screening or information sharing; or if it “has a significant terrorist presence”. A tally from David Bier and Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, suggests that 116,000 immigrants, and more than 500,000 visitors (including students and temporary workers) could be affected by the ban over the next four years.

The way the ban was rolled out and how the proclamation was written shows how the White House has learned from its earlier failures. When Mr Trump first tried to ban travel from seven Muslim-majority countries in 2017, chaos ensued. Travellers who had already been issued visas or were approved for refugee resettlement were held at airports. Some green-card holders were detained. The ban followed through on a campaign promise for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on”. Thousands of Americans, joined by Democratic Party leaders, gathered at big-city airports to protest. This was early in Mr Trump’s first term and the #resistance was in full swing.

Federal judges issued nationwide injunctions to block the first and second iterations of the travel ban. A third version of the policy ended up in front of the Supreme Court by virtue of Trump v Hawaii. Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts found that the Immigration and Nationality Act gives the president exceptional discretion to bar certain people, including specific nationalities, from the country so long as he can argue that their presence is “detrimental to the interests of the United States”. The ruling offered yet more evidence for what Adam Cox of New York University has termed “immigration exceptionalism”: the court’s profound deference to the president where immigration policy is concerned.

That opinion influenced the way the Trump administration resurrected the policy for his second term. The president halted refugee admissions in January (except for white South Africans) and waited until June to implement the new travel ban, to try to avoid the kind of protests and litigation that took place last time around. The proclamation announcing the new ban lists each country and the justification for its inclusion on the list. There are exemptions, including for green-card holders, athletes travelling to America for the World Cup or the Olympics in coming years, Afghans who worked for the American government and the immediate families of Americans, so long as they can prove their relationship. This is a “much more defensible executive order than the iterations in Trump 1.0”, says Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute.

But just because travel ban 4.0 looks like it will hold up in court doesn’t mean it makes sense. Like slapping tariffs on allies to bring back American manufacturing or declaring a foreign invasion to speed up deportations, Mr Trump’s justification for banning foreigners from these countries does not hold up to much scrutiny. The president suggested that the ban would help neutralise national-security threats such as the recent attack on Jewish marchers in Boulder by an Egyptian man who overstayed his visa. Yet Egypt is not on the list. A Department of Homeland Security report confirms that most listed countries do indeed have high visa-overstay rates. But, with the exception of Haiti and Venezuela, the total number of people from restricted countries who didn’t leave America when they were supposed to is relatively small. Meanwhile some 40,000 Colombians and 21,000 Brazilians, who are not subject to travel restrictions, overstayed their tourist and short-term work visas (see chart), yet their countrymen are not banned.

The travel ban also sends a message. It is yet another signal—along with the detention of international students for their political views and immigration raids in big cities—that America is becoming much more hostile to foreigners. When the Supreme Court decided Trump v Hawaii in 2018, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion in which he describes an “anxious world” watching to see whether America’s leaders “adhere to the Constitution and to its meaning and its promise”. That warning looks ever more prescient.