By Enyichukwu Enemanna
The US President Donald Trump has announced the expansion of his administration’s travel ban to include five more countries in addition to imposition of new limits on others.
The five countries whose citizens are banned from entering the U.S. include Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan and Syria. The administration also fully restricted travel on people with Palestinian-Authority-issued travel documents.
The move on Tuesday is part of ongoing efforts to tighten U.S. entry standards for travel and immigration.
The decision follows the arrest of an Afghan national suspect in the shooting of two National Guard troops over Thanksgiving weekend.
In June, President Donald Trump announced that citizens of 12 countries would be banned from visiting the United States and those from seven others would face restrictions, resurrecting a hallmark policy of his first term.
At the time the ban included Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen and heightened restrictions on visitors from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
In addition to the Tuesday restriction on five countries, the Republican administration also added 15 countries to the list of those facing partial restrictions.
In this category are, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Dominica, Gabon, Gambia, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Tonga, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
