“Donald Trump just ripped a life preserver from their desperate arms and tied weights around their ankles,” said U.S. Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Yvette Clarke in a joint statement.
Advocates and elected officials forcefully condemned President Donald Trump’s travel ban targeting a dozen Black and brown nations. Citing national security concerns, Trump’s Wednesday proclamation fully restricts or limits entry into the United States for nationals from Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.
U.S. Reps. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., co-chairs of the House Haiti Caucus, slammed the administration’s “bigoted” travel ban as an “unambiguously xenophobic attack on the most vulnerable people in the world.” The congresswoman warned that many will “die as a direct consequence of his cruelty.”
“These are children, women, and men who are fleeing political turmoil and war, who are trying to survive famine and natural catastrophes,” said Pressley and Clarke in a joint statement. “Haitians and so many others are drowning, and Donald Trump just ripped a life preserver from their desperate arms and tied weights around their ankles.”
The Democratic leaders said the ban is “targeted abuse” against millions of Black and Brown people that goes beyond Trump’s Muslim ban during his first term in office, which similarly included countries from Africa and the Middle East.
“It’s undergirded by nothing but baseless accusations and one man’s insatiable hate,” said Pressley and Clarke.
Trump’s original travel ban in 2017 was quickly challenged and blocked in federal court, eventually resulting in the president issuing a series of other travel bans later that year and in 2020 that remained intact until former President Joe Biden revoked them. Some of the countries in Trump’s new travel ban are the same nations as those that were part of his first-term ban. The ban includes visa suspensions for some affected immigrants currently living in the United States.
Guerline Jozef, executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, an advocacy group for Black migrants, dismissed the Trump administration’s argument that its travel ban is about national security.
“This is about systemic racism, xenophobia, and the criminalization of Black, Brown, and Muslim bodies globally,” said Jozef. “Once again, U.S. immigration policy is being weaponized to deny entry, dignity, and basic human rights to people from countries that have long borne the brunt of colonialism, Western intervention, and economic extraction.”
The immigration activist added, “This is the same administration that deports Black immigrants only to import White refugees from South Africa under the false claim of genocide.’’
Jozef urged Congress to pass legislation to codify “guardrails that prevent the wholesale banning of nationals from entire regions of the world.”
Nihad Awad, executive director of CAIR National, said the ban targeting mostly African and Muslim nations raises the “specter of more vague free speech restrictions” and described it as “overbroad, unnecessary and ideologically motivated.”
Award warned, “Even with the exceptions outlined in the order, this new travel ban risks separating families, depriving students of educational opportunities, blocking patients from access to unique medical treatment, and creating a chilling effect on travelers.”
He continued, “The government already can and does engage in an extensive vetting process before approving individual visas, and it could continue to do so with any nations of concern rather than imposing blanket bans on their citizens.”
U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., said Trump’s travel ban is meant to instill fear and “distract” from the president’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that is currently being considered for passage in Congress. The nation’s only Gen Z congressman blasted the legislation as “reckless.” He warned that its proposed tax and budget cuts would “hand over tax cuts to billionaires and rip away healthcare and food assistance from working families.”
“We won’t give in to this political fear-mongering,” said Frost. “Just like during Trump’s first term, this ban will be met with legal challenges and fierce public outrage.”
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Originally sourced via trusted media partner. https://thegrio.com/2025/06/06/insatiable-hate-advocates-warn-of-deaths-amid-trumps-bigoted-travel-ban-against-black-and-brown-countries/
