The Trump administration is pausing all immigration applications for people from the 19 countries it deemed “high-risk” that were already subject to U.S. travel restrictions imposed in June.
According to a Department of Homeland Security memo posted Tuesday on the website of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the measure affects people from Venezuela, Cuba, Burundi, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
“USCIS has considered that this direction may result in delay to the adjudication of some pending applications and has weighed that consequence against the urgent need for the agency to ensure that applicants are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible,” the agency said in the four-page policy memo.
The suspended immigration processes include asylum, green card and citizenship applications as the new policy mandates people from the list of countries “undergo a thorough re-review process, including a potential interview and, if necessary, a re-interview, to fully assess all national security and public safety threats.”
That means those people already in the U.S. — regardless of when they arrived — will come under extra scrutiny.
According to USCIS, more than 1.4 million people have pending asylum applications that could be affected by the new pause. The memo said it’s up to the agency’s director, Joseph Edlow, on when to lift the pause.
A spokesperson for the USCIS office did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment on the new policy Tuesday night.
The move comes days after a shooting in Washington, D.C., left a National Guard member dead and another wounded.
The suspect in the shooting, who pleaded not guilty to murder on Tuesday, is an Afghan national who worked in a special CIA-backed Afghan Army unit before emigrating to the U.S. in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden administration program that evacuated and resettled tens of thousands of Afghans after the U.S. withdrawal from the country, officials said. But, his asylum application was approved this year under the Trump administration.
On June 4, Trump signed a proclamation barring travel to the United States for people from from 12 countries — among them Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen — and partially restricting the entry of nationals from seven others: Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
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