Washington: United States President Donald Trump announced drastic measures against immigration in late November. All asylum procedures were suspended indefinitely “until we can ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible,” Joseph Edlow, director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), posted on X. According to Deutsche Welle, further restrictions have since been imposed on nationals from 19 countries. These include entry bans and the suspension of all immigration applications and naturalizations. The granting of permanent residence and work permits, known as green cards, has also been suspended for people of the nationalities in question. USCIS chief Edlow said the president had also directed him to conduct “a full scale, rigorous re-examination of every green card for every alien from every country of concern,” including holders of residence permits that have already been granted. The background to these new policies is an attack on two National Guard soldiers in Washington on November 26. The two men were seriously injured by gunshots in the center of the US capital, and one of the victims later died. The suspected attacker, a 29-year-old Afghan, was arrested and charged with murder. According to media reports, he entered the US in 2021, the year of the chaotic US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, having previously worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other US government agencies in his home country. The immigration ban applies to citizens of countries on three continents. In Asia, this includes Afghanistan, Yemen, Iran, Turkmenistan, Myanmar, and Laos. In Latin America, the ban applies to Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela. But most of the sanctioned countries are in Africa: Libya, Chad, Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Togo, Equatorial Guinea, the Republic of Congo, and Burundi. These are all the same 19 countries for which the US government imposed entry bans in June 2025. The new restrictions have far-reaching consequences for the individuals concerned: all green card applications, naturalizations, and asylum procedures have been put on hold for the time being. Those affected cannot pursue their applications, even if they were already being processed. Even green card holders could lose their permanent residency status after a new security check. In the worst case, they would then face deportation to their home countries. While the US government considers the measures necessary steps to protect national security, Democratic lawmakers and human rights organizations have been critical. “Nothing meaningfully links the 19 countries except the administrations opportunistic stigmatization and exclusion of people based on where they were born,” Tanya Greene, US program director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “This sweeping change is not about safety. It is about scapegoating entire nationalities to justify discriminatory policies.”