Authoritarianism by exhaustion — Trump’s new travel ban

Just a week after Donald Trump first took office as president, he signed Executive Order 13769 – his first travel ban. It halted refugee admissions and suspended entry into the US for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. All of these countries have a Muslim majority. Because of that, and also because Trump had previously said that he intends to ban Muslims from the US, critics referred to the order as a “Muslim ban”.

The backlash was immediate and broad, coming from Republicans and Democrats alike, as well as US diplomats, business leaders, universities, faith groups and international organisations such as the United Nations and Amnesty International. Protests erupted in airports and cities across the US. A friend and I – both of us immigrants to the US ourselves – spontaneously drove to the international airport in Houston to express our outrage, along with hundreds of other protesters.

I remember I felt hopeful. Surely, even people who didn’t come out to the airport would recoil once they learnt what the order was actually doing to real human beings – for example, to the 78-year-old Iranian grandmother, certainly not a threat to national security, who came to the US with a valid visa to visit her children, as she did every year. She was detained for 27 hours at Los Angeles International Airport, denied access to lawyers, and fell ill before finally being allowed to enter the country.

Today, nine years later and one year into the second Trump presidency, I’m less hopeful.

On the first day of 2026, a proclamation signed by Trump took effect, expanding an earlier travel restriction to 39 countries. Citizens of these countries, as well as holders of travel documents issued by the Palestinian Authority, are generally barred from obtaining visitor, student, exchange or immigrant visas. Turkmenistan is a partial exception: its citizens may obtain nonimmigrant visas such as tourist, student or exchange visas, but immigrant visas remain suspended. The other countries subject to the ban are Afghanistan, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon, Gambia, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Myanmar, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Together, they make up about 20% of the world’s countries.

Despite affecting far more people than the 2017 ban, this one passed almost without notice: no airport protests, no sustained outrage and little public awareness that it had happened at all. This is partly because it has become impossible to keep up with the incessant noise coming from the White House, which Trump’s former chief political strategist Steve Bannon has explained is strategic: “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

As the noise about the Nobel Peace Prize, the “War on Christmas”, shower pressure and wind turbines causing cancer absorbs public attention, Trump advances a steady programme of norm-breaking and lawlessness. The ongoing extrajudicial killings of people on boats in the Pacific and the Caribbean, the illegal abduction of Nicolás Maduro, the threats against Greenland, the masked federal agents terrorising communities across the US, the separation of families and disappearances of people to inhumane prisons at home and abroad and the cuts in foreign aid that have already cost countless lives are just some examples. In normal times, none of these would be partisan issues. But these are not normal times.

As understandable and human it is that many of us are worn down by a sustained state of outrage, Americans as well as the rest of us must pay attention and cannot allow exhaustion to harden into indifference. Silence is complicity, and complicity is not an option.

On a human level, the 1 January travel ban means this: Students who earned admission to US universities and secured funding after years of studying and planning are now barred from enrolling, losing scholarships and life-changing educational opportunities. Students who already started academic programmes in the US and travelled home to renew their visas cannot return to finish their degrees. Parents with lawful status in the US are unable to have their children abroad come and join them, leaving families indefinitely separated. Children are prevented from traveling to the US to sit with a dying parent, attend a funeral or provide end-of-life care. Married couples, fiancés and partners are forced into separation. Patients who rely on specialised or life-saving treatment available only in the US are prevented from entering. Professionals and academics are unable to attend conferences. Entrepreneurs and businesspeople are blocked from attending critical meetings or negotiating deals. Entire populations are labelled dangerous or undesirable, reinforcing discrimination and social exclusion both inside and outside the US.

This is not an exhaustive list, but merely a snapshot of the devastating and entirely predictable consequences of Trump’s new travel ban. Like its predecessors, it is not a security measure. It is a choice to inflict harm on ordinary people, and this choice is deliberately cruel.

As I’m writing this, the Trump administration has announced a further escalation: the suspension of immigrant visas for 75 countries, a move that primarily affects families by closing the door on reunification. If we meet such policy choices with silence, authoritarianism has already won. DM

Rainer Ebert holds a PhD in philosophy from Rice University in Texas and is a research fellow at the University of South Africa.