KUALA LUMPUR – US President Donald Trump has announced a sweeping travel ban on nationals from 12 countries, reviving one of his most controversial policies under the banner of national security.
Effective 12.01am EDT on June 9 (12.01pm Malaysian time), citizens from the following countries will be barred entirely from entering the United States: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
In addition, seven other countries – Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela – will face partial travel restrictions, including tighter visa vetting and limits on certain travel categories, according to reports.
Visas issued before June 9 will remain valid, but all new applications from these countries will be denied or subject to heightened screening. The ban applies across all travel categories.
Trump said the 12 nations were identified based on their failure to meet US standards for vetting travellers, maintaining criminal records, and cooperating on deportation and visa security.
He was quoted as describing them as having either a “large-scale presence of terrorists” or “deficient” security systems.
“We cannot have open migration from any country where we cannot safely and reliably vet and screen those who seek to enter,” he said in a video circulating on social media.
The move comes just days after a man threw a firebomb into a pro-Israel rally in Boulder, Colorado. The suspect, an Egyptian national who had overstayed his US visa, is not from a country on the list – but Trump cited the case as justification for tougher controls.
Somalia, which is on the full-ban list, was the first to respond diplomatically via a statement.
The directive follows a January 20 executive order requiring US security agencies to identify countries with weak vetting procedures or “hostile attitudes” toward the United States.
Trump has warned that more countries could be added to the list.
The latest proclamation revives a hallmark of Trump’s first term – widely known as the “Muslim ban” – which was initially blocked by the courts before being upheld by the US Supreme Court in 2018.
It was repealed by President Joe Biden in 2021, who called it “a stain on our national conscience.”
Trump’s new ban goes further, covering several countries not included in the original order and broadening the justification beyond religion to include overstay rates, document fraud, and criminal data-sharing failures.
For now, Malaysians are not affected by the new policy. – June 5, 2025