Trump Expands Travel Ban To Nigeria And Five Additional Countries.

The Trump administration said Friday it will add six new countries to its travel ban. Restrictions on entering the U.S. will now apply to certain travelers and migrants from Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, as well as Sudan, Tanzania, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar, according to a senior Department of Homeland Security official.

Nonimmigrant visas were not affected for the additional countries, Wolf said. Those visas are given to people travelling to the US for a temporary stay. They include visas for tourists, those doing business or people seeking medical treatment. 

The government will also stop issuing "diversity visas" to citizens of Sudan and Tanzania.  Wolf said the six countries failed to meet US security and information-sharing standards, which necessitated the new restrictions. The problems Wolf cited ranged from subpar passport technology to a failure to sufficiently exchange information on "terrorism" suspects and criminals.

"These countries, for the most part, want to be helpful," Wolf said, "but for a variety of different reasons simply failed to meet those minimum requirements that we laid out."

The presidential proclamation will take effect on February 21. 

The original travel ban - announced during Trump's first week in office in January 2017 - restricted nearly all immigrants and tourists from seven Muslim-majority countries.  The policy was revised amid court challenges, but the US Supreme Court conclusively legalized it in June 2018.

The existing version of the ban includes the Muslim-majority nations of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. North Korea and Venezuela also face visa restrictions, but those measures affect relatively few travelers.

Those restrictions will remain in place, Wolf said.

Among the new countries hit with visa restrictions, Nigeria sends the most immigrants to the US. The US Department of State issued approximately 7,900 immigrant visas to Nigerians in the fiscal year 2018, which began on October 1, 2017.