The United States has suspended green card and citizenship applications for nationals of 19 countries already under travel restrictions, tightening an immigration crackdown that has intensified since a fatal shooting involving an Afghan migrant last week.
The halt, outlined in an official memorandum released Tuesday, applies to countries including Afghanistan, Yemen, Haiti, Venezuela, Sudan and Somalia. All are on the list of nations covered by travel rules imposed by President Donald Trump in June.
Senior US officials have signaled for days that broader restrictions were coming. The shift follows the killing of a National Guard soldier, allegedly by an Afghan national who arrived in the United States during the 2021 evacuation from Kabul. The suspect pleaded not guilty to murder charges on Tuesday.
The memo said US Citizenship and Immigration Services “plays an instrumental role in preventing terrorists from seeking safe haven in the United States” and argued that the recent attack showed “what a lack of screening, vetting, and prioritizing expedient adjudications can do to the American people.”
Trump, who has renewed his pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants, said on November 26 that he would “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the US system to fully recover.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem pushed for an even broader ban, writing on X that she had urged Trump to apply a “full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,” though she did not specify which nations she meant.
Current travel rules also cover Burundi, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Laos, Libya, Myanmar, Sierra Leone, Togo and Turkmenistan.
US media reported Tuesday that federal authorities are preparing a large enforcement operation in Minnesota focused on Somali immigrants. Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey said local police would not participate.
“Our values and our commitments to the Somali community, to every community of immigrants and people in our city is rock solid and will be unwavering,” he said.