The New Yorker:

By Iran Crouch
Newsletter Editor

Trump’s travel bans are here, anew. The President issued an order last night restricting the entry of foreign nationals from twelve countries—including Haiti, and countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East—and severely limiting the entry of those from seven others. “We don’t want ’em,” he said, in a video released as part of the announcement. In 2018, the Supreme Court narrowly upheld a similar travel ban enacted by the Trump Administration, finding in a 5–4 decision that setting such limits on who enters the country falls within a President’s powers. (Trump’s ban was later rescinded by the Biden Administration.)

I posed some questions to Jonathan Blitzer, who covered the initial Trump travel bans and has reported extensively on immigration, about what to expect from this latest order. Our conversation has been edited and condensed.

What were some of the real-world effects that Trump’s previous travel ban—colloquially known as the Muslim ban—had on people’s lives?

The first travel ban affected people immediately: travellers were blocked in the middle of their trips. The rules changed quite literally while they were in the air. When they touched down, they were detained and, in many instances, turned around. Families were stranded without loved ones. Government officers didn’t know how to enforce the rules. It was utter chaos. Lawsuits were filed immediately.

After the initial travel ban was blocked in court, the Administration tried rewriting it twice. This was all happening at the same time that the Administration was suspending—then gutting—the refugee program. People fleeing persecution who’d actually qualified for protection were denied it outright. That included refugees who’d been vetted and approved for resettlement in the United States. As a result of the travel bans, they were left in limbo. Many, in fact, were still waiting abroad when Trump was sworn in a second time.

The Administration has been focussed on immigration from Venezuela, but does’t outright ban residents from there in this order. Why these countries? Does the list surprise you?

The Trump Administration has targeted Venezuelans in a number of egregious, systematic ways in the past few months. Much of this is just a function of raw ideology and racism, dressed up as concerns about security; there isn’t a thoroughgoing logic to it. The government is saying that the countries on this list are sources of concern because the U.S. can’t be sure that people are being screened and vetted properly there—and that, as a consequence, they pose threats to public safety. The first Trump Administration landed on exactly that rationale as its face-saving justification for its revised travel ban; eventually, it convinced the Supreme Court. The President, after all, has a lot of leeway in immigration matters, particularly when he invokes national security.

Just hours after his Inauguration this year, Trump signed an executive order instructing government agencies to analyze which countries may have had lax or insufficient vetting policies. So there was a full windup leading to this week’s announcement. Revealingly, though, when Trump announced the new travel ban last night, he mentioned the recent attack in Boulder, Colorado. The suspect in that incident is Egyptian, and Egypt isn’t on the list of countries in the current travel ban.

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