The White House cited security concerns arising from the countries' chronic deficiencies vetting travelers

US President Donald Trump has expanded America's travel ban list, adding eight more countries, including Syria and the Palestinian Authority. The new restrictions are set to take effect on January 1.

The move is part of a broader effort to tighten entry restrictions for foreign nationals whose countries have "chronic vetting deficiencies" that make it difficult for US authorities to determine whether the travelers are admissible, the White House said in a proclamation on Tuesday.

Such gaps could be exploited to "threaten United States national security," it said.

The expanded travel ban bars entry to citizens of Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan, Syria, Laos, and Sierra Leone, as well as people traveling on Palestinian Authority-issued documents.

Syria was added to the list days after two US soldiers and a civilian were killed in the country by a suspected Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) gunman. The ban came despite Trump's rapprochement with the new government in Damascus, which came to power last year after jihadist groups toppled long-time president Bashar Assad.

According to the proclamation, the decision will not apply to those who have already been granted asylum in the US.

The updated US travel ban follows an earlier proclamation in June 2025 that restricted entry for nationals from 19 countries on national security grounds.

Trump has recently criticized immigrants from Somalia, one of the countries on the list, after the emergence of a fraud scandal involving the Somali diaspora in Minnesota. "We're gonna go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country," he said last month, urging the Africans to go home.

In early December, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she urged Trump to impose "a full travel ban on every damn country that's been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies."

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Her comments followed the arrest of an Afghan asylum seeker who was charged with first-degree murder after shooting two members of the US National Guard in Washington last month, one of whom later died in a local hospital.