President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a proclamation banning travelers from 12 countries from entering the United States and partially restricting visitors from seven other nations.

“We will restore the travel ban, some people call it the Trump travel ban, and keep the radical Islamic terrorists out of our country that was upheld by the Supreme Court,” wrote Trump in a written statement. The restriction goes into effect on Monday, June 9.

The full ban applies to foreign nationals from Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. The partial ban applies to people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.

In a video address posted on social media, Trump said a recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado, “underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas.” He added, “We don’t want ’em.”

The man charged with that attack is from Egypt, which is not one of the countries listed in the travel ban.

The list overlaps with the sites of U.S. military and CIA misadventures stretching back more than a century, including Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen.

The inclusion of Afghanistan angered many who have worked to resettle its people in America. The travel ban makes exceptions for Afghans on Special Immigrant Visas, or SIV — a classification granted to people who worked closely with the U.S. government during the two-decade-long war there. That still leaves many former allies and their families on the outside looking in. The ban also comes as the Department of Homeland Security’s termination of Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for Afghanistan is scheduled to take effect on July 14, 2025. 

During America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the U.S. government helped evacuate around 80,000 Afghans who aided U.S. forces, ranging from interpreters to CIA-trained fighters and their families, including members of so-called Zero Units implicated in the killings of civilians.

Afghanistan was also one of the largest sources of resettled refugees, with about 14,000 arrivals in a 12-month period through September 2024. Trump suspended refugee resettlement on his first day back in office.

Andrew Sullivan, a U.S. Army veteran and the executive director of No One Left Behind, which advocates on behalf of SIV applicants, expressed gratitude for the Trump administration’s exemption for Afghan Special Immigrant Visa holders. “However, there are still many allies who served shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States who are being left behind because they do not qualify for the SIV program,” he said. “This includes those who were injured in the line of duty and were unable to complete a full year of service, the women and men of the Afghan National Army who trained and served with U.S. Special Forces, and many more.”

“People in other nations fall victim to the same cycle — trusting U.S. promises, only to be abandoned when perceived strategic interests shift.”

Trump’s Afghan abandonment isn’t unique, however. It follows in a long tradition of American desertion of wartime allies that includes partners from Southeast Asia — like Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia — to the Middle East.

“This isn’t a Trump-era phenomenon; it’s a pattern that spans decades, from Vietnam to Afghanistan and from Kurds to Ukrainians,” said Erik Sperling of Just Foreign Policy, an advocacy group critical of mainstream Washington foreign policy. “It’s no secret that ostensible American partners in the developing world often end up worse off as a result of Washington’s actions. Yet time and again, people in other nations fall victim to the same cycle — trusting U.S. promises, only to be abandoned when perceived strategic interests shift.”

Afghanistan was not part of Trump’s first-term travel ban but, in the time since, fell to the Taliban when the U.S. withdrew its forces in 2021 under the Biden administration. This resulted from a peace deal with the Taliban signed by the Trump administration in 2020.

Trump wrote that Afghanistan “lacks a competent or cooperative central authority for issuing passports or civil documents and it does not have appropriate screening and vetting measures.” He also cited its visa overstay rates as a reason for the nation’s inclusion in the new travel ban.

Sullivan said many U.S. allies would be harmed by the restrictions. “They stood by us in war but now face danger because of their service with no clear way out,” he told The Intercept. “We must keep our promise to them as well.”

Earlier this week, around 100 members of Congress called on the Trump Administration to reverse its decision to end TPS for Afghans. “This decision is devastating for resettled Afghan nationals in the United States who have fled widespread violence, economic instability, challenging humanitarian conditions, and human rights abuses in their home country,” they wrote, noting that it would negatively impact approximately 9,000 Afghan nationals. “Many of these Afghans fearlessly served as strong allies to the United States military during the war in Afghanistan, and we cannot blatantly disregard their service. We respectfully ask that you redesignate Afghanistan for TPS to ensure Afghan nationals in the U.S. are not forced to return to devastating humanitarian, civic, and economic conditions.”

Sperling said the United States should be upfront about its history of abandoning its partners when they outlive their usefulness. “If American policymakers are serious about building durable soft power around the world, they should reckon with this history and ensure that future allies understand the risks before taking U.S. advice,” he told The Intercept, noting that America’s latest exercise in ally abandonment may have far reaching consequences.

“Many Afghans reasonably relied on U.S. promises and put their trust in the U.S.-backed plans for their country,” he said. “Turning our back on them now is both immoral as well as a strategic blunder that will undermine U.S. interests in the region for the foreseeable future.”

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This post was originally published on The Intercept.