A new Muslim and African ban by Trump can and must be prevented

More than a month into US President Donald Trump’s second term, his brutal crackdown on immigration and asylum seekers has already harmed countless people. Law enforcement has carried out mass raids across the United States, rounding up people. Tens of thousands have been deported, and the pathway to asylum has been blocked for tens of thousands more.

In the face of this onslaught, people have mobilised en masse to protect vulnerable groups at the local and national levels. One piece of legislation could make a difference in this struggle: the National Origin-Based Antidiscrimination for Nonimmigrants (NO BAN) Act, introduced to the US Congress on February 6 by Representative Judy Chu and Senator Chris Coons. The bill would create much-needed limitations and accountability for any president intent on categorically banning refugees, asylum seekers, or people of specified faiths or nationalities from entering the US.

Why is this needed today? Because there is growing fear that Trump is setting the stage for a resurrection of the notorious Muslim and African bans of his first term.

Eight years ago, as a freshly inaugurated president, Trump issued an executive order to fulfill his campaign promise of enacting a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Within hours of the decree, thousands of travellers from predominantly Muslim countries were detained for hours at airports across the nation, as federal agents struggled to decipher who could enter and who would be barred.

Hundreds of families were separated, and Trump subsequently expanded the ban to include Tanzania, Sudan, Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan and Nigeria – dubbed the “African ban”. People fleeing war, starvation and other humanitarian disasters were thus cut off from seeking shelter in the US.

Over 40,000 people were denied visas due to the Muslim and African bans, which caused a 94 percent drop in Muslim refugee admissions between January and November 2017.

The traumatic impacts of the Muslim and African bans, currently rescinded, still linger years later: families separated, people deprived of critical medical treatment, travel and visa fee expenses lost, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim hate.

Among those affected is Maral Tabrizi, who was denied her family’s support when she most needed it. When Maral was pregnant in 2018, her parents applied for tourist visas to witness the birth of their first grandchild. Her father’s application was held up in administrative processing, and while they waited, the Muslim ban was approved by the Supreme Court, and both parents’ visas were refused.

Maral was deprived of her parents’ support during pregnancy and postpartum. With a connective tissue disorder making daily tasks incredibly painful, Maral found it impossible to return to work as quickly as she had hoped. She suffered from postpartum depression due to the pain and sadness this caused and was on antidepressants for more than a year. Her parents will also never be able to meet her father-in-law, who died while they were waiting to come visit the US.

Maral was a plaintiff in class-action litigation which sought to force the government to reconsider the visa applications of individuals affected by the bans. Our organisation, Muslim Advocates, co-counsels the case. As a result of the lawsuit, a court ordered the government to provide nearly 25,000 individuals affected by the bans with a fee-waived visa reconsideration process, the implementation of which is ongoing today.

However, President Trump is poised to enact a potentially broader travel ban and his administration might target individuals with legal status for questioning and monitoring simply because they are citizens of banned countries or because his administration considers them “hostile”.

This is why since 2019, Muslim Advocates and our partners in the No Muslim Ban Ever coalition have championed Representative Chu’s and Senator Coons’s NO BAN Act. If passed, this legislation would extend to religion the nondiscrimination provisions under immigration law that already cover race, sex, and nationality. It would also require that any travel restriction imposed under Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) section 212(f) be based on specific and credible facts, and in a way that narrowly addresses a compelling government interest. It would require the secretaries of the US Department of State and US Homeland Security to provide notice to Congress before any such travel restriction, and a briefing within 48 hours.

Without the limitations of the NO BAN Act, presidents will continue to abuse their power by closing our borders arbitrarily or based on thinly veiled religious or racial hate. Just last year, then-President Joe Biden used the same INA 212(f) authority to shut down the border, in a plausible violation of US immigration law. And Trump invoked 212(f) when he closed the southern border in January. The NO BAN Act constrains such cruelty and presents an alternative to the hate and racism fuelling it.

In a world replete with humanitarian disasters, our decisions today can mean the difference between life and death for untold numbers of people. Back in 2017, the No Muslim Ban Ever coalition formed from the movement that showed up at airports, as people from all walks of life converged to protest the first Muslim ban. Today, lawmakers should also take a bold stance for our country’s highest aspirations of religious freedom and refuge from tyrannical leaders and pass the NO BAN Act.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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