by Misty Severi
President Donald Trump on Tuesday added five more countries, including Syria, to his list of countries whose citizens are banned from entering the United States after multiple terror attacks occurred globally in recent weeks.
The most recent terror attack occurred in Australia on Sunday, when a father and a son opened fire on Jewish worshipers during Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach. The shooting killed 15 people and wounded 25 others.
The president signed the initial travel ban of his second administration in June, which barred citizens from Afghanistan, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
The travel ban was extended Tuesday to include citizens from Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, the Palestinian Authority, South Sudan, and Syria, according to the White House.
“The United States must exercise extreme vigilance during the visa-issuance and immigration processes to identify, prior to their admission or entry into the United States, foreign nationals who intend to harm Americans or our national interests,” Trump wrote in a proclamation.
“The United States Government must ensure that admitted aliens do not intend to threaten its citizens; undermine or destabilize its culture, government, institutions, or founding principles; or advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists or other threats to our national security,” he added.
Trump also said that American law enforcement reporting showed these “foreign nationals from countries named in this proclamation have been involved with crimes that include murder, terrorism, embezzling public funds, human smuggling, human trafficking, and other criminal activity.”
“Many of these countries are ranked in the top third of countries for criminality, and widely unreliable foreign civil documents and lack of authoritative criminal information make it extremely difficult for United States screening and vetting authorities to assess prior criminal activity and other grounds of inadmissibility,” the president noted.
The president added Syria to the list after two American soldiers were killed, and three soldiers were wounded in the country over the weekend. The soldiers were part of the Iowa National Guard and were killed during ongoing anti-ISIS operations in the Middle East.
During Trump’s second term has banned 39 countries partially or entirely from coming to America.
Trump also banned citizens from eight countries from traveling to the United States in his first term, which was upheld by the Supreme Court.
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Misty Severi is a reporter for Just the News. Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network and contributed to this story.
