The Trump administration has suspended all immigration applications from 19 countries deemed high-risk days after the deadly shooting in Washington, D.C., by an Afghan national, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday.
The suspension applies to people from 12 countries whose citizens have been banned from entering the United States since June, as well as citizens of seven other countries that were previously subject to visa restrictions, according to a document from immigration officials seen by AFP.
Green card applications from citizens of these countries, as well as applications for naturalization, have been suspended.
The list includes some of the poorest and most unstable countries in the world.
Last June, Donald Trump ordered a ban on entry into the United States for citizens of Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen .
The other seven countries are Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela .
Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem said Monday night via X that she had recommended to President Donald Trump "a complete ban on entry for citizens of every damn country that has flooded our nation with murderers, leeches, and welfare addicts."
"We don't love them, none of them," she said.
Yesterday, the US president made comments about Somalia, saying that immigrants from that African country should not be welcome in the United States. "I don't want them in our country," he said.
Following the November 26 attack, attributed to an Afghan national, that killed a National Guard soldier and seriously injured another soldier, the Trump administration has frozen all asylum decisions in the United States.