As Anxiety Mounts Over a Possible New Trump Travel Ban, Community Leaders Speak Out

California lawmakers and civil rights advocates are voicing condemnation as President Trump is expected to impose a new “travel ban” barring foreign nationals from entering the U.S. based simply on their country of origin.

The expected ban was prefigured by a Jan. 20 executive order that called on several agencies to identify countries with “deficiencies” in vetting the identity of their citizens and determine how many people from those countries entered the U.S. since former President Joe Biden took office. The order gave the agencies — including the departments of State, Justice and Homeland Security — 60 days to produce such a list, meaning it could be released by Friday.

Such a ban would echo restrictions from Trump’s first term, which barred admission to people from several majority-Muslim countries.

Drafts of the new list described in recent reports by Reuters and the New York Times suggest more than 40 countries divided into red, orange and yellow tiers. The most restrictive “red” tier — a flat ban on entry — would include Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.

Rep. Judy Chu (D–Pasadena) called it “discrimination, pure and simple,” that would disproportionately affect not only travelers but also Muslim Americans from targeted countries.

“To say that those who are coming in just as visitors, but possibly as graduate students or as relatives, that they would automatically be under suspicion and must be banned, is a sweeping indictment of those folks,” she said. “All it does is heighten prejudice and discrimination against people from those countries or who are of that heritage.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to KQED’s requests for comment on a possible travel ban.

‘We don’t know how far this administration will go’

The mounting anxiety over another travel ban comes during the holy month of Ramadan, when more Muslims are attending congregational prayers. Zahra Billoo, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of the San Francisco Bay Area, and her colleagues have been visiting mosques nightly to inform people about the risks facing Muslims under the Trump administration.

“And every single night, I have been approached by one or more people asking about the safety of their upcoming travel,” she said, adding that CAIR is advising people to pause international travel plans for 30 days until the outlines of a travel ban become clear and encouraging visa holders outside the country to return as soon as possible.

Billoo also said the recent arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and pro-Palestinian activist, by immigration officers — and the Trump administration’s stated intention to strip him of his green card (something that an immigration judge will have to decide) — have chilling implications for other non-citizens.

“This administration has demonstrated its complete disregard for due process. Mahmoud Khalil has not been charged with a crime, and he was abducted from his home without the presentation of any evidence of wrongdoing,” she said. “So when we take this one scenario, and we extrapolate how a new travel ban could affect people, what’s most concerning is that we don’t know how far this administration will go.”

Officials with Jewish Family and Community Services of the East Bay say they’ve helped resettle more than 2,300 Afghans who fled the 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and are assisting many others with applications still in the pipeline.

JFCS director of refugee services Fouzia Azizi said the possibility of a new travel ban is leading to panic among Afghans who are here and trying to bring their spouses and children, as well as among those who’ve been approved for Special Immigrant Visas based on their work alongside U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

And the uncertainty comes at a time when Trump has declared that admitting refugees is “detrimental to the interests of the United States” and the refugee resettlement system is in peril.

“All of this has had a significant impact, creating fear and anxiety among the community we serve,” said Azizi. “We are also getting calls daily from Special Immigrant Visa holders who had their travel and resettlement canceled and are arriving to our community on their own. Everyone is trying to get out before the travel ban begins so they can reunite with their families.”

Concerns over broad language

Legal and policy advocates representing Arab and Muslim Americans say they are concerned that a new order from the Trump administration could affect not only new arrivals from targeted countries but also people in the U.S. who came from those countries during the Biden years.

They point to language in the Jan. 20 executive order titled, Protecting the United States From Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats, that says:

“… the United States must ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.”

Yasmine Taeb, legislative director for the Muslim political organization MPower Change, called that “retroactive” language alarming.

“The order referenced removals for those in the U.S. that hold hostile attitudes towards the government or institutions,” she said. “We could potentially see an uptick in the number of individuals targeted under the travel ban and threatened with deportation because of their activism for Gaza … [or] based on their First Amendment protected activity and political speech.”

Rep. Chu recently re-introduced a bill in Congress, dubbed the NO BAN Act, that would require visa restrictions to be narrowly tailored, non-discriminatory and based on specific evidence. The bill passed the House in 2021 on a largely party-line vote, including support from all California Democrats and opposition from all California Republicans. It stalled in the Senate.

This year, Bay Area lawmakers Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D–San José) and Rep. Lateefah Simon (D–Oakland) have expressed support for the bill, and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D–Calif.) is a co-sponsor of the Senate version. None of California’s Republican delegation, including Rep. Tom McClintock (R–Modesto), the chair of the House Judiciary Committee’s immigration subcommittee, responded to requests for comment on their positions on the NO BAN Act or a possible travel ban.

For her part, Chu remembered rushing to Los Angeles International Airport in 2017 when Trump’s first travel ban was imposed — a scenario she hopes will never be repeated.

“I got these frantic calls about 50 Muslims being detained who had green cards, legitimate travel documents, but they were kept there with no food, water or access to basic legal representation,” she said. “Our legislation would say that future presidents can’t abuse their authority to suspend the entry of people to pursue anti-immigrant or bigoted ends.”

Chaos at airports from first-term travel ban

In January 2017, at the start of his first term, Trump signed an executive order banning travel to the U.S. by people from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Sudan. The order created chaos at airports, as border officials were initially caught off guard and travelers with valid visas were stuck in transit, turned back or stranded inside airports.

The ban sent hundreds of protesters rushing to San Francisco International Airport and other airports nationwide, while dozens of civil rights attorneys set up shop in SFO’s arrival areas to assist families or travelers in limbo. By the time a federal judge stayed the executive order on Feb. 3, 60,000 visas had been provisionally revoked nationwide.

A series of court challenges prompted the Trump administration to revise the order twice before the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a third version in June 2018. That version applied to individuals from Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, plus government officials from Venezuela.

On his first day in office in 2021, former President Joe Biden rescinded the ban, calling it “a stain on our national conscience.”

The third version of the ban was supposed to include a mechanism for citizens from banned countries to request a waiver permitting them to travel to the U.S. However, the process was unclear, and most applications were denied. The San José-based Pars Equality Center sued and won.

Finally, in May, a federal judge cleared the way for 25,000 people from affected countries to submit new visa applications, with fees waived.

Pars Equality Center’s legal director, Paris Etemadi Scott, said a new travel ban could do away with that access. She added that Biden-era vetting and screening protocols for visa applicants are already so rigorous that a total travel ban seems unnecessary.

“We’re all for keeping terrorists out. We’re all for keeping bad elements out,” she said. “But we already have such an extreme vetting system that you’d think that they would catch whoever may be a risk to the security of the United States. So that’s the part we don’t understand.”