DHS Expands Immigration Ban, Ensuring The Only Way An African Can Come To The US Is If We Bring Slavery Back

Ever since Trump took office and turned over immigration enforcement to someone who killed pets more often than she’s experienced moments of joy, the world has been shrinking. It America vs. everyone else at this point, with the Trump administration adding hefty amounts of imperialism to its heady blend of white Christian fascism.

To be non-white is to be less than 2/3rds of a human, which is something I thought we might have moved past during the last 100 years or so. But everything old is new again, especially the stuff that should just be the relics of a shameful history, rather than the latest thing getting gilded by the administration’s ex-Fox News turd polishers.

After an Afghan refugee shot some National Guard troops, Trump and his DHS placed an indefinite pause on immigration applications from a total of 19 countries, including (of course) Afghanistan, a country we hastily exited and turned over to the Taliban.

For no discernible reason, another 20 countries have been added to the immigration ban. Unsurprisingly, none of these countries are mostly white. Here’s NPR with the details on the administration’s latest burst of xenophobia:

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, in a memo released Thursday, said it would pause the review of all pending applications for visas, green cards, citizenship or asylum from immigrants from the additional countries. The memo also outlines plans to re-review applications of immigrants from these countries as far back as 2021.

The list, which is composed mostly of countries in Africa, includes Angola, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

Wow. Imagine that. There’s a pattern developing here, and it’s exactly what you think it is. Here’s the full list of countries whose residents are subject to an indefinite ban on immigration applications:

Afghanistan, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Chad, Congo, Cuba, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Laos, Libya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Myanmar, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, The Gambia, Togo, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia, and Zimbabwe

Here’s what that looks like:

So, we’ve got more than half of Africa on the blocklist. It will never reach 100% because South Africa is home to some pretty feisty white colonials the president seems to personally appreciate despite (or because of) their white nationalist leanings.

Give it a few more months and the rest of that continent should be colored in. And while this government will pretend this is about national security and/or thwarting the international drug trade, it’s safe to assume any national security threat posed by autocrats Trump likes (Putin, Bukele, Orban, Erdogan) will be ignored to keep them, um, whitelisted. And any other nation that poses no threat one way or another but happens to be heavily populated by people with more skin pigmentation will find their immigration privileges suspended until at least January 2029.

We’re no longer part of the free world. We’re a nation that’s hastily and deliberately backsliding into the worst version of itself, thanks to the irrational hatred of those in power. We may not have forgotten our history, but we’re being ruled by people who want to doom us to repeat it.