US President Donald Trump signed a new travel ban Wednesday targeting 12 countries including Afghanistan, Iran and Yemen, reviving one of the most controversial measures from his first term.Trump said the measure was spurred by a makeshift flamethrower attack on a Jewish protest in Colorado that US authorities blamed on a man they said was in the country illegally.The ban targets nationals of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.Trump also imposed a partial ban on travelers from seven countries: Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.Both go into effect on Monday, the White House said.The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted,” Trump said in a video message from the Oval Office posted on X.”We don’t want them.”Trump compared the new measures to the “powerful” ban he imposed on a number of mainly Muslim countries in his first term, which caused huge travel disruption across the world.The US leader said that 2017 ban had stopped the United States suffering terror attacks that happened in Europe. “We will not let what happened in Europe happen in America,” Trump said.We cannot have open migration from any country where we cannot safely and reliably vet and screen. That is why today I am signing a new executive order placing travel restrictions on countries including Yemen, Somalia, Haiti, Libya, and numerous others.””Being in the United States is a great risk for anyone, not just for Venezuelans,” Venezuela’s Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said after the announcement, warning citizens against travel there. Trump’s new travel ban could however face legal challenges, as have many of the drastic measures he has taken in his whirlwind return to office.
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