In the wake of heightened terrorism concerns, President Donald Trump is expanding a travel ban and barring immigration from corrupt and problematic countries. In June, the president announced an initial set of complete travel restrictions on a number of African and Middle Eastern countries, citing national security concerns related to the targeted countries’ poor vetting and screening processes, destabilized or corrupt governments, high crime and terrorism rates, and high visa overstay rates. Accordingly, any and all travel from Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, or Yemen to the U.S. was halted. Now, the president is adding more countries to his no-entry list.

In a Tuesday executive order, the Trump administration imposed full travel restrictions against Burkina Faso, Laos, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and Syria, as well as travelers with documents issued by the Palestinian Authority. “The United States must exercise extreme vigilance during the visa-issuance and immigration processes to identify, prior to their admission or entry into the United States, foreign nationals who intend to harm Americans or our national interests,” the president said regarding the decision.

Citing law enforcement officials, the White House explained that “foreign nationals from countries named in this proclamation have been involved with crimes that include murder, terrorism, embezzling public funds, human smuggling, human trafficking, and other criminal activity.” The White House continued, “Many of these countries are ranked in the top third of countries for criminality, and widely unreliable foreign civil documents and lack of authoritative criminal information make it extremely difficult for United States screening and vetting authorities to assess prior criminal activity and other grounds of inadmissibility.”

In comments to The Washington Stand, Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, said, “This new order limiting travel from high-risk countries couldn’t be more timely. It is the result of an extensive review of all the factors the government needs to consider to determine if we can adequately vet and admit people from other countries, whether as visitors or as immigrants.” Vaughan noted that, at various points in American history, every single U.S. immigration or refugee program “has at some point been compromised by terrorists, criminals, or fraudsters. The vetting vulnerabilities expose our nation to the real potential for harm, which we have witnessed far too much of this year.” She added, “Some populations are simply unvettable, as the president’s order spells out in great detail for each of the countries that are now restricted.”

The president provided a lengthy list of examples of how countries named in the travel bans fail to vet, screen, or even identify their own nationals or prevent crime and terrorism. One country does not report or register hospital births and sells citizenship documentation, another country handwrites such documents as marriage or birth certificates on notepaper, yet another hosts a corrupt school system which falsifies records so that its citizenships can fraudulently obtain U.S. student visas. Corruption abounds in each of the countries, with officials falsifying and selling various forms of documentation, obscuring and hiding criminal records from American authorities, and facilitating criminal activity such as sex trafficking, slavery, illegal drug manufacturing and distribution, and more. Some of the countries under travel restrictions are also run by terrorist organizations; in one country, the president charged, the government only has territorial control over 40% of the country’s geography, with various terrorist and criminal organizations dominating the rest.

“Foreign nationals from the countries described above have also exploited the historic generosity of the United States and violated our Nation’s immigration laws by not adhering to the terms of their nonimmigrant or immigrant visas,” the president stated. “These visa overstays and other abuses flagrantly violate United States immigration laws. … To faithfully uphold United States immigration law, the flow of foreigners from countries with high overstay rates or significant fraud must stop.”

Vaughan commented, “Regardless of why, continuing to allow unvetted or unvettable foreign nationals into our country on a large scale is asking for trouble. We cannot ignore the fact that hostile foreign actors have and will continue to use weaknesses in our immigration system to attack us or to carry on criminal activities here.” She continued, “It is the most fundamental responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security, together with other agencies, to lessen the inherent risk of visas and immigration through targeted restrictions like the ones announced, and to continuously review conditions in these countries and constantly seek to improve our systems.”