"Every damn country" — Trump plots sweeping new travel ban to the U.S.

DHS secretary equates foreign visitors and immigrants with "killers" "leeches" and "junkies."

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced last night that she recommended a “full travel ban” to the president, signaling Trump’s immigration crackdown would go much further than it already hays — and in ways that will harm all Americans.

In a remarkable social-media post, the Cabinet official charged with overseeing safe and lawful travel to the United States announced she was recommending a “full travel ban” on countries “flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.” President Trump promptly amplified the message. The Department of Homeland Security did, too. The full post below.

I just met with the President.

I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.

Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat, and the unyielding love of freedom—not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to AMERICANS.

WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.

Trump already declared last week he intended to “pause” migration from 19 “Third World Countries,” but the DHS secretary’s comments suggest the administration intends to go even further. While the details are still unclear, the intent is not a mystery. Donald Trump appears to be headed toward implementing his long-desired plan to slam shut America’s doors in ways we have not seen in modern history.

Indeed, in his first term, he sought to go beyond targeted restrictions against high-threat areas — what he complained to many of us on his team were “weak-ass travel bans” — and desired something closer to a global closure of travel and immigration to the United States from non-European countries. He was talked out of sweeping global bans of travel and immigration. Lawyers said the courts would strike it down, and experts warned him it could do grave damage to the American economy.

Now Trump appears to be forging ahead anyway. And if the administration succeeds in moving forward, ordinary Americans, not just would-be migrants, will bear the cost. (I broke down the story on this morning’s broadcast of DEFIANCE Radio. Click the link below, or keep reading for more.)

Trump is exploiting another crisis.

The catalyst for Noem’s announcement was the tragic shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., allegedly by an Afghan national who had entered the United States legally in 2021 and whose asylum application was approved by the Trump administration earlier this year. The attack on American soldiers demands outrage and a full accounting of how the attacker slipped through the system.

But the administration’s response has not been a sober tightening of vetting standards. It’s been an opportunistic suspension of asylum decisions nationwide, the review of thousands of green cards already issued, and now a proposed expansion of Trump’s existing travel ban to encompass “every damn country” on a widening enemies list of nations. What’s more, Trump has ominously threatened to revoke citizenship from Americans deemed “non-compatible with Western Civilization.”

This is the culmination of an obsession that dates back to Trump’s first term. I watched it unfold from inside the Oval Office. After the Supreme Court upheld a narrower iteration of Trump’s misguided travel ban (a re-do painstakingly designed by career officials instead of political advisers) the president was still irate. The restrictions to keep terrorists out were, in his words, “too watered down.”

“We just need more countries,” he told us in a March 2019 meeting in the Oval Office. “We need to ban more countries, okay?”

This was clearly not about terrorists, I realized. His domestic policy adviser Stephen Miller reassured him that he could overrule the experts. Trump leaned back, imagining the headline: “Trump’s Newest Travel Ban,” he said, smiling at us from behind his desk and expanding his arms to show that such a thing would encompass whole swaths of the world. However, it never came to fruition, for the reasons discussed above.

But that hasn’t kept his mind off it. Apparently not at all.

If left to Trump, a global “ban” will be wildly arbitrary.

Yesterday’s announcement appears to be less about national security and more about the fulfillment of a long-held desire. The administration has not specified which nations would be subject to the expanded prohibition, which a telling ambiguity. DHS recently listed at least 19 countries, most in Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean, as candidates for “full or partial restrictions.” Noem’s rhetoric suggests even that list may be too modest and the Trump wants to go further.

I doubt the administration will be putting much thought into it, at least not much more than the president’s personal animosity. In his first term, Trump would describe to us the “kind” of people he wanted to make sure didn’t come to America. And the common denominator was not “terrorist.” He’d reference countries like Haiti and El Salvador as places he wanted to turn the spigot “off.” In almost the same breath, he’d tell us where he wanted to increase migration; places like Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The people are “beautiful,” he’d say, not shying away from the obvious — that skin color and wealth appeared to be primary factors.

Other times, it was bizarre fixations. Once during a meeting at one of his golf resorts, he demanded to our homeland security team that we block all people from Somalia from coming into the country. He didn’t want to see more Somalis. Why?

“They have fucking pirates!” he shouted.

To be sure, there was a piracy threat from armed militants off the coast of Somalia, but Trump seemed to picture swashbuckling Jack Sparrows stumbling across the beaches. And he didn’t want anyone from that country allowed into ours. If this is the type of expert logic that Donald Trump will use to decide which foreign nationals are allowed to visit America — and which are not — then our history as a beacon of freedom is about to be remade in the image of an old-man’s biases.

Traditionally, travel restrictions have been calibrated, evidence-based, and aligned with intelligence assessments to filter out the “needles in the haystack.” In other words, U.S. agencies create restrictions to help them filter out and catch actual terrorists and criminals, while letting other peaceful visitors the United States. But the White House is now effectively branding entire populations as national security threats because Donald Trump dislikes them.

Americans will pay the costs.

A sweeping, indefinite travel freeze may satisfy a personal and xenophobic itch for Donald Trump. But it will not make the country any safer. I would know. At his demand, I studied the concept over and over with the experts, though not because there was really any need. It was stupid on its face because and would do so much harm to America’s economy. We just needed to figure out how to convince Trump of that.

What will happen, if this goes forward, is that it will make life more expensive, less competitive, and more isolated for millions of U.S. citizens.

First, prices will rise. Immigrants do not “take jobs”; they fill them — in agriculture, elder care, transportation, construction, hospitality, and advanced technology. Limiting immigration has already worsened labor shortages across key industries. A broader ban would push prices up on everything from groceries to home repairs to childcare.

Second, tourism will collapse, along with the businesses that rely on it. Travel bans cut both ways. The U.S. tourism sector, a trillion-dollar engine, depends on international visitors. That’s why DHS has been focused on needle-in-the-haystack threats, and not shutting off travel from entire countries. Restricting entry from whole continents would decimate airlines, hotels, restaurants, and small businesses in travel-dependent cities.

Third, Americans abroad will pay the price in retaliation. When the U.S. imposes sweeping immigration restrictions, other countries respond in kind. This has already happened with some of our closest allies, who’ve added additional travel restrictions and vetting to Americans. Expect higher visa costs for Americans, longer waits at foreign airports, and fewer opportunities for U.S. students and workers overseas if Donald Trump starts shutting the door on our friends.

Fourth, our universities and research institutions will lose their talent pipelines. Nearly half the graduate students in American STEM programs come from abroad. Many of the patents, companies, and breakthroughs that drive the U.S. economy begin with a visa stamp, including from countries Trump thinks are “hellholes.” If the White House cuts off the flow, those innovations — and the jobs they create — will go elsewhere, including to foreign adversaries like China trying to fill the vacuum.

Finally, our global leadership will erode further. For generations, America’s moral authority rested in part on our willingness to welcome people fleeing danger and seeking a better life. When we treat all immigrants as threats — “leeches” and “junkies,” in the words of the sitting Secretary of Homeland Security — we forfeit that moral position and hand an ideological victory to authoritarian competitors.

Is America recognizable anymore?

This White House keeps talking about saving “Western civilization.” But incredibly, most of its foreign policy moves — from violating the laws of war by blowing up boats to sweeping travel bans against friends and trading partners — are directly undermining America’s claim to leading the “free” world. In fact, the president is championing a worldview that casts outsiders as parasites and America as a brittle nation that must seal itself off to survive.

Liberals are already horrified by all of this. But small-government conservatives should be, too. They should recoil at Trump’s reflexive isolationism. Anyone who understands America’s economy and its dynamism knows that we didn’t achieve explosive growth from homogeneity or fear, but from openness, ambition, and a belief that talent can come from anywhere.

Despite the White House’s attempts to exploit the National Guard shooting, the new travel-ban push is not about safety. It’s about creating another Trumpian spectacle — a political promise that shutting doors is strength. But a country that closes itself off from the world is not becoming stronger. It’s just slipping quietly into decline. And the people who will feel it most are not those kept out, but those left inside.

Your friend, in defiance,

P.S. WHAT’S HAPPENING ON DEFIANCE.NEWS

Here’s what’s coming up.

1. **STOCKING STUFFER REMINDER** — If you want to send a powerful message this holiday season, you can actually send a Constitution to pro-Trump Members of Congress — with a message reminding them their oath is to the Constitution, not to the president. We’ll hand deliver it. And you’ll get a printable certificate you can put in a Christmas stocking or holiday gift bag, letting someone know that you sent it in their name. Give the gift of defiance here: https://www.defiance.org/swag/p/constitutions-for-congress 100% of the proceeds go to DEFIANCE.org and the pro-democracy fight.

2. TOMORROW / DEFIANCE Radio / 7:30 am ET - Every week day, LIVE right here on Substack, you get the top stories of the day and breaking analysis. You can tune into tomorrow’s broadcast here.

3. WEDNESDAY / DEFIANCE.org Monthly Members Meeting / 5pm ET - Join us LIVE for the once-a-month Members meeting, as we decide what effort to fund in the coming month and take stock of other ways to fight back against Trump’s abuses of power. Invite forthcoming for Members/subscribers only.