US Suspends All Asylum, Immigration Requests from Citizens of 19 Countries (Full List)

The Donald Trump administration has suspended the processing of all asylum applications and immigration benefit requests from nationals of 19 countries labelled “high-risk,” following a new directive issued Tuesday by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

In the sweeping policy memo, USCIS ordered personnel to freeze all pending asylum applications (Form I-589) while the agency conducts a comprehensive review of its vetting procedures.

The directive further instructs immigration officers to halt all pending immigration benefits sought by citizens of the 19 countries listed under Presidential Proclamation 10949, regardless of their date of entry into the United States.

Additionally, the memo mandates a fresh security re-evaluation of already approved benefits for nationals of the affected countries who entered the US on or after January 20, 2021. Those individuals could face new interviews or re-interviews “to fully assess national security and public safety risks,” the memo states.

The proclamation applies full entry restrictions to nationals of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, and partial restrictions to citizens of Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

The new policy comes amid heightened calls for an immigration crackdown from President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, following last week’s killing of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C.

Authorities say the suspect—a 29-year-old Afghan national who arrived in the US in 2021 after the Afghanistan withdrawal—had been granted asylum earlier this year and had previously worked with various US government agencies, including the CIA.