President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House on Jan. 20, 2025. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump issued a long-awaited “travel ban” late Wednesday to bar entry of nationals from a dozen countries and partially restrict entry for nationals from a smaller set of countries.
Countries that will have a full ban are Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Countries with partial bans are Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
Wednesday’s proclamation is a modified version of the travel ban from the president’s first term that barred entrance to nationals from predominantly Muslim countries. Federal courts struck down several versions of the travel ban until the Supreme Court upheld it in 2018. Former president Joe Biden repealed the travel ban when he came into office in 2021.
Wednesday’s proclamation allows for some exceptions, including visas that were issued to people from those countries before Wednesday, those who have been granted asylum by the U.S. or have a refugee status and lawful permanent residents.
The president’s proclamation cited national security concerns, but gave little detail on the reasoning that led to selecting the countries.
“Publicly disclosing additional details on which I relied in making these determinations, however, would cause serious damage to the national security of the United States, and many such details are classified,” according to the proclamation.
The Trump administration has moved to end temporary legal status such as humanitarian protections for nationals that hail from some of the countries on the ban list: Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela. Immigration advocates have challenged those moves to end those legal protections in federal courts across the country.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem walks past reporters after doing a TV interview with Fox News outside of the White House on March 10, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem Monday announced about 9,000 Afghans living in the United States who had been protected from deportation will no longer be shielded as of mid-July.
After the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in 2022, the Biden administration designated Temporary Protected Status, along with other legal temporary status pathways, for thousands of Afghans who aided the U.S. against the Taliban terrorist group and fled their home country. Thirteen U.S. military members were killed in the chaotic withdrawal at the Kabul airport.
About 80,000 Afghans came to the U.S. and settled in various programs that offered legal protections and work authorization. Of that group, 9,000 were designated TPS.
TPS is granted to nationals whose home country is deemed too dangerous to return due to violence or disasters.
The TPS designation for Afghanistan will expire on May 20 and deportation protections will lift on July 12. The order is likely to face legal challenges, since Noem’s moves to curtail TPS for other nationals have faced lawsuits.
“This administration is returning TPS to its original temporary intent,” Noem said in a statement. “We’ve reviewed the conditions in Afghanistan with our interagency partners, and they do not meet the requirements for a TPS designation. Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent(s) them from returning to their home country.”
The termination of the status comes as the Trump administration fast-tracked the classification of refugees for white South Africans who landed in the U.S. Monday at Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February that noted Afrikaners — an ethnic group in South Africa made up of European descendants, predominantly Dutch — are “victims of unjust racial discrimination” after South Africa’s government passed a land ownership law in an effort to address land dispossession that occurred under apartheid.
The Trump administration suspended all refugee services in late January and has resisted a district court’s order to reinstate the program, along with contracts to organizations that facilitate refugee resettlement services.
Noem said that determination to end TPS for Afghanistan was based on a review from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Afghanistan’s conditions along with input from the State Department.
The Taliban currently control the government and the State Department’s travel advisory for the country is the highest level, a 4, which means it advises against traveling.
DHS added in a statement that Noem “further determined that permitting Afghan nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to the national interest of the United States.”
Noem has also ended TPS for Venezuelans and Haitians.
The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court in early May to lift a lower court’s order that reversed Noem’s decision to end TPS for one group of Venezuelans.
Farah, an Afghan refugee, moved to Appleton in January 2022 after fleeing unrest in her home country.
She had never experienced winter before and arrived in Wisconsin during what’s traditionally the coldest month of the year.
“I was crying,” Farah recalled. “I told my husband, ‘No, I don’t want to stay here. It’s so cold. I really cannot.’”
But she and her husband both found jobs soon after and eventually chose to make the Badger state their home, even if she still hasn’t gotten used to frigid Wisconsin winters.
“The people are very friendly,” Farah said of Wisconsin residents. “Most of the time, when I talk to people, they say, ‘Haven’t you faced any racist things or any negative comments from the people?’ I say, ‘No, I really haven’t.’”
She’s one of many Afghan refugees who are making a home in Wisconsin after fleeing Afghanistan when the Taliban returned to power. According to the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, more than 800 Afghan refugees resettled in Wisconsin in 2022. Of those, 181 resettled in the Fox Valley.
Farah, an Afghan refugee who lives in Appleton, Wis., smiles as she stands next to a banner featuring her in the “Our Afghan Neighbors” exhibit inside the History Museum at the Castle in Appleton. (Joe Schulz / WPR)
On President Donald Trump’s first day in office in 2025, he suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. That has left a number of Afghans who worked alongside the U.S. government and military for years in limbo, NPR reported. Beginning in 2021, thousands of Afghan refugees in similar situations were sent to Fort McCoy in Sparta, and some eventually settled in the state through that program.
WPR is withholding Farah’s last name out of concern that her family in Afghanistan could be targeted by the Taliban due to her role in helping advance American interests in Afghanistan before the 2021 U.S. withdrawal.
Farah is now a group program specialist for World Relief Wisconsin. She has helped Afghan refugees in the Fox Cities tell their stories and connect with neighbors. One way is through a recent oral history exhibit in the region.
The exhibit, designed as mobile pop-up banners, features portraits and stories of Afghans who immigrated to the U.S. seeking education, freedom and democracy. Farah conducted interviews with refugees highlighting the diversity within the Afghan community, but also their shared values and aspirations.
“These people who are coming, all of them hate war and violence — they just escaped from that,” Farah said. “They just want peace. They value education. They want to improve their life here. They want to support their kids. They want their kids to be happy here.”
Farah and her husband have a son. But especially for Afghan refugees with daughters, Farah says moving to the U.S. provides better opportunities.
“In Afghanistan now, the girls cannot go to school after their sixth grade, so they will be at home, and it is the worst thing that can happen to a family,” she said. “The people who have daughters, they know that they have a future here.”
Farah, an Afghan refugee living in Appleton, Wis., speaks with Dustin Mack, chief curator for the History Museum at the Castle, as they walk through the “Our Afghan Neighbors” exhibit in November 2024. (Joe Schulz / WPR)
Dustin Mack, chief curator for the History Museum at the Castle, said the community’s response to the exhibit has been “overwhelmingly positive.” He said the exhibit was designed to be able to be moved between different places like schools, universities, churches and businesses.
In fact, the exhibit is already booked through most of the spring, he said.
“Anybody can reach out to the History Museum and book the exhibit and bring it to their facility to help continue to share this story and get to know our new Afghan neighbors,” Mack said. “It’s been great to see so many people interested and willing to continue to share this story.”
Life in Afghanistan
Not only did Farah help make the exhibit a reality, but her story is featured in the exhibit.
Farah grew up in western Afghanistan in the Herat Province, one of 34 provinces in the country. She loved going to school.
“I have very good memories of my parents supporting me going to school, then university,” she said.
When she went to college, she studied education and English literature. After finishing her university studies, Farah began working for the Lincoln Learning Center in Afghanistan in 2014 as part of a United States-funded project.
“I was teaching English as a second language for university and school students,” Farah said. “We were advising the students who wanted to come to the United States to continue their education, and we did a lot of cultural programs. I did a lot of information programs for women’s rights or girls’ right to education.”
The partnership with the U.S. government, Farah said, helped thousands of Afghans come to the United States for their master’s or doctorate degrees before they returned to Afghanistan to teach in universities. Farah’s husband also worked with the U.S. government as a university lecturer.
Their work for the American government made them both eligible for a Special Immigrant Visa, which allowed anyone who worked for the government for more than two years eligible to leave Afghanistan when they felt at risk, Farah said.
When the Taliban came into Herat in the summer of 2021, Farah remembers being told by her employer that she was no longer safe and she needed to go to the capital city of Kabul with her husband and then-two-year-old son.
Farah, her husband and their son lived out of a hotel in Kabul for about a month, Farah said. After the Taliban had taken control of the Afghan government, she described it as a time of immense fear.
Farah said Afghanistan had experienced social reforms before the Taliban returned to power that gave women more freedom to get an education and advance.
That all went away when the Taliban returned to power, Farah says.
“Everything changed,” she said. “Women didn’t want to stay in that country and experience the same things that they had like 20 years ago. That was the reason everyone just wanted to get out of Afghanistan and not see those scary scenes from their childhood.”
One day at the hotel, Farah said she received a call from her father-in-law who asked, “Where did you put your documents?”
He explained that people were searching homes to learn who was working with the U.S. government. She told him her documents were in her bedroom.
“They burned all the documents that we had, like certificates and a lot of things that we had with the U.S. government,” Farah said.
Coming to America
After living in a hotel for about a month, Farah, her husband and their son decided to leave Afghanistan. Her employer helped them get a visa to enter Pakistan. Farah says it was fairly common for people in Afghanistan to go to Pakistan for medical reasons.
“Whenever you met a person from the government, like the Taliban, they’d ask you why you are going to the airport. Who did you work with? A lot of questions,” she said. “If they knew you worked with another government, especially the U.S., they would kill you, or they wouldn’t let you go out of Afghanistan.”
Farah and her family were able to get out of the country, traveling first to Pakistan and then to Qatar before coming to the United States.
Farah, an Afghan refugee living in Appleton, Wis., left, speaks with Dustin Mack, chief curator for the History Museum at the Castle, right, as they walk through the “Our Afghan Neighbors” exhibit in November 2024. (Joe Schulz / WPR)
After arriving in Wisconsin, Farah not only had to adjust to the cold winters, but also to other cultural differences. She said it was difficult to find halal foods that she and her family would eat back in Afghanistan.
But she said she had a lot of support in adjusting to life in the Fox Valley.
“We were resettled by World Relief. They gave us a good neighbor team, who helped us with transportation, and they even took us to further areas like Oshkosh or Milwaukee to get halal food and all of that,” Farah said. “They were a very huge help for us to find the things that we needed.”
Now, Farah is working to help other refugees adjust in her role as a group program specialist with World Relief Wisconsin. The organization’s financial future may be uncertain after threats to federal funding by the Trump administration in January 2025.
“The cost of living is lower than in some other states, so we are seeing other Afghans coming,” Farah said. “We have an Afghan family who opened a store here, so we don’t need to go to Oshkosh or Milwaukee. It’s going well, and we are still learning about life here.”
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