Trump's Travel Ban Targets Black Migrants as Protests and Deportations Spread
Since protests started in the Los Angeles area last week, Trump has deployed more than 2,000 members of the National Guard. This has followed several days during which people have gathered to condemn a series of deportation raids that have led to more than 100 arrests.
Democratic leaders have assailed the administration's decision to send the National Guard.
'What we're seeing in Los Angeles is chaos that is provoked by the administration,' Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said during a press conference on Sunday. 'When you raid Home Depot and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you run armored caravans through our streets, you cause fear and you cause panic.'
She added that 'we stand with all Angelenos,' and emphasized the importance of protesting peacefully.
A longtime critic of Trump, California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X on Sunday that 'commandeering a state's National Guard without consulting the Governor of that state is illegal and immoral.' Trump has repeatedly balked at demands that he withdraw troops, prompting Newsom to sue the administration.
The last time deployment occurred without the request of a governor was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson federalized National Guard members to protect protesters in Alabama at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Elizabeth Goitein, the senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told CNN.
Additionally, The New York Times has reported that, in 1963, President John F. Kennedy used the powers of his office to override a governor's objections and deploy troops to integrate the University of Alabama.
While some weekend protests have largely dispersed, others are expected in the days ahead in response to the new travel ban. Read on to learn more about how this ban differs from the one under the first Trump administration and where communities can find resources.
This story will be updated.
The proclamation, which Trump has framed as a matter of public safety, prohibits citizens of Afghanistan, Chad, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, the Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen from entering the U.S.
Trump's ban doesn't revoke visas that had already been issued to people from these countries, according to guidance from the U.S. State Department. New applicants from the countries on the list must meet specific criteria to be exempted from the ban and receive a visa.
Additionally, citizens of Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela who are outside the U.S. and don't possess a valid visa now have heightened restrictions.
Most of the affected countries are in Africa and the Middle East and are facing war or other social and political crises. Notably, Haiti was a target of Trump and his allies during the 2024 presidential campaign, when the president claimed, without evidence, that Haitian migrants in Ohio were eating people's pets. Those baseless assertions fueled an uptick in security threats against migrants from the island.
For the millions of Black migrants in the U.S., the new ban likely comes as no surprise.
'I knew in November that there would be trying and exhausting times ahead,' Farah Larrieux, a native of Haiti living in South Florida, told Capital B earlier this year. 'But this, this is much more than that.'
Trump's 2017 ban was narrower in focus, mostly targeting Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
The former ban was amended several times to remove some countries from the list and add others, such as North Korea and Venezuela. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ban in 2018; former President Joe Biden repealed it in 2021. He condemned the ban as 'a stain on our national conscience,' and said that it was 'inconsistent' with the country's 'long history of welcoming people of all faiths and no faith at all.'
The 2017 ban triggered an array of courtroom challenges. Immigration experts expect the new ban to withstand such pushback, saying that its greater precision — including offering specific exemptions and providing more reasoning for the restrictions — might help it to survive legal scrutiny.
'I imagine there will be legal challenges to the current ban, but I do think that they've been very careful in how they've crafted it,' Mariam Masumi Daud, an immigration lawyer, told NPR.
She underscored her concern about the impact the ban will have on vulnerable communities.
'This is going to have a global impact, as well, on our reputation in the world,' she said. 'And we're basically closing our doors for immigrants, and it's very unfortunate that this type of policy has become normalized.'
Organizations such as the International Rescue Committee and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration provide a variety of legal services to migrants, including law clinics that share information and resources; representation for processes including naturalization and citizenship; and screenings that clarify the path to lawful status.
Immigration advocates also urge people who could be affected by the ban to review their documents to make sure that they're valid and accurate and, if necessary, secure legal counsel to determine what strategic options might be available to them.
Trump has said that the ban list is 'subject to revision based on whether material improvements are made' and that 'new countries can be added as threats emerge around the world.' The Legal Aid Society and other groups are keeping detailed, country-specific information about the ban and offering updates as necessary.
The post Trump's Travel Ban Targets Black Migrants as Protests and Deportations Spread appeared first on Capital B News.
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29 minutes ago
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And his influence still guides activism today, reminding younger generations of the power the community holds in driving lasting change through nonviolence, said David J. Johns, a queer Black leader based in Washington, D.C. 'Being an architect of not just that moment but of the movement, has enabled so many of us to continue to do things that are a direct result of his teaching and sacrifice,' said Johns. He is the CEO and executive director of the National Black Justice Collective, which attributes its advocacy successes in the Black queer space to Rustin's legacy. Rustin was born into activism, according to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research & Education Institute. His grandparents, Julia Davis and Janifer Rustin, instilled in him and his 11 siblings the value of nonviolence. His grandmother was a member of the NAACP, so Rustin was surrounded and influenced by leaders including the activist and scholar W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson, who wrote 'Lift Every Voice and Sing.' 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Rustin's sexuality and his former association with the Young Communist League forced him to step away as a Civil Rights leader for several years. In 1960, New York congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. threatened to spread false rumors that Rustin and King were intimately involved, weaponizing widespread homophobia to undermine their cause, according to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. But Rustin resumed his work in 1963 as chief organizer of the March on Washington, which became a defining moment in the Civil Rights Movement and paved the way for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 2023, Netflix released the biopic, ' Rustin. ' Filmmaker and co-writer Julian Breece, who is Black and queer grew up in the '90s when, he said, being gay still correlated with the spread of AIDS, leading to shame and isolation. But he learned about Rustin's impact on the Civil Rights Movement and found a peer to admire. 'Seeing a picture of Rustin with King, who is the opposite of all those things, it let me know there was a degree to which I was being lied to and that there was more for me potentially, if Bayard Rustin could have that kind of impact,' Breece said. 'I wanted Black gay men to have a hero they could look up to,' he said. The Associated Press receives financial support from the Sony Global Social Justice Fund to expand certain coverage areas. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
San Francisco Chronicle
33 minutes ago
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Gavin Newsom swings through South Carolina, where Democrats will play pivotal 2028 nominating role
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