What The Hell America!

As demonstrations against the California immigration crackdown continue, President Donald Trump’s new order banning travel to the U.S. for citizens of a dozen countries — most of them in Africa and the Middle East — went into effect on Monday.

Since protests started in the Los Angeles area last week, Trump has deployed more than 2,000 members of the National Guard. This has followed several days during which people have gathered to condemn a series of deportation raids that have led to more than 100 arrests.

Democratic leaders have assailed the administration’s decision to send the National Guard.

“What we’re seeing in Los Angeles is chaos that is provoked by the administration,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said during a press conference on Sunday. “When you raid Home Depot and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you run armored caravans through our streets, you cause fear and you cause panic.”

She added that “we stand with all Angelenos,” and emphasized the importance of protesting peacefully.

A longtime critic of Trump, California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X on Sunday that “commandeering a state’s National Guard without consulting the Governor of that state is illegal and immoral.” Trump has repeatedly balked at demands that he withdraw troops, prompting Newsom to sue the administration.

The last time deployment occurred without the request of a governor was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson federalized National Guard members to protect protesters in Alabama at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Elizabeth Goitein, the senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told CNN.

Additionally, The New York Times has reported that, in 1963, President John F. Kennedy used the powers of his office to override a governor’s objections and deploy troops to integrate the University of Alabama.

While some weekend protests have largely dispersed, others are expected in the days ahead in response to the new travel ban. Read on to learn more about how this ban differs from the one under the first Trump administration and where communities can find resources.

This story will be updated.

Which countries are affected by the new ban?

The proclamation, which Trump has framed as a matter of public safety, prohibits citizens of Afghanistan, Chad, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, the Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen from entering the U.S.

Trump’s ban doesn’t revoke visas that had already been issued to people from these countries, according to guidance from the U.S. State Department. New applicants from the countries on the list must meet specific criteria to be exempted from the ban and receive a visa.

Additionally, citizens of Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela who are outside the U.S. and don’t possess a valid visa now have heightened restrictions.

Most of the affected countries are in Africa and the Middle East and are facing war or other social and political crises. Notably, Haiti was a target of Trump and his allies during the 2024 presidential campaign, when the president claimed, without evidence, that Haitian migrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets. Those baseless assertions fueled an uptick in security threats against migrants from the island.

For the millions of Black migrants in the U.S., the new ban likely comes as no surprise.

“I knew in November that there would be trying and exhausting times ahead,” Farah Larrieux, a native of Haiti living in South Florida, told Capital B earlier this year. “But this, this is much more than that.”

How is this ban different from the one before?

Trump’s 2017 ban was narrower in focus, mostly targeting Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

The former ban was amended several times to remove some countries from the list and add others, such as North Korea and Venezuela. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ban in 2018; former President Joe Biden repealed it in 2021. He condemned the ban as “a stain on our national conscience,” and said that it was “inconsistent” with the country’s “long history of welcoming people of all faiths and no faith at all.”

The 2017 ban triggered an array of courtroom challenges. Immigration experts expect the new ban to withstand such pushback, saying that its greater precision — including offering specific exemptions and providing more reasoning for the restrictions — might help it to survive legal scrutiny.

“I imagine there will be legal challenges to the current ban, but I do think that they’ve been very careful in how they’ve crafted it,” Mariam Masumi Daud, an immigration lawyer, told NPR.

She underscored her concern about the impact the ban will have on vulnerable communities. 

“This is going to have a global impact, as well, on our reputation in the world,” she said. “And we’re basically closing our doors for immigrants, and it’s very unfortunate that this type of policy has become normalized.”

Where can communities go for help?

Organizations such as the International Rescue Committee and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration provide a variety of legal services to migrants, including law clinics that share information and resources; representation for processes including naturalization and citizenship; and screenings that clarify the path to lawful status.

Immigration advocates also urge people who could be affected by the ban to review their documents to make sure that they’re valid and accurate and, if necessary, secure legal counsel to determine what strategic options might be available to them.

Trump has said that the ban list is “subject to revision based on whether material improvements are made” and that “new countries can be added as threats emerge around the world.” The Legal Aid Society and other groups are keeping detailed, country-specific information about the ban and offering updates as necessary.