June 5, 2025

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HAITIAN BRIDGE ALLIANCE CONDEMNS RENEWED TRAVEL BAN AS RACIST AND DISCRIMINATORY

San Diego, CA — The Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA) strongly denounces the Trump administration’s reinstatement and expansion of its discriminatory travel ban, which now targets 19 countries. — nearly all from Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and South Asia — regions historically marginalized by Western powers. Many of these nations have long suffered from U.S. foreign policy failures, economic sanctions, and military interventions that have destabilized their societies, leading to forced displacement and migration. This policy is a continuation of the administration’s pattern of targeting Black and Brown communities under the guise of national security. 

The new ban, set to take effect on June 9, 2025, imposes full entry prohibitions on nationals from 12 countries and partial restrictions on seven others. The administration claims these measures are necessary due to concerns over terrorism and inadequate vetting processes. 

“This is not about national security — this is about systemic racism, xenophobia, and the criminalization of Black, Brown, and Muslim bodies globally,” said Guerline Jozef, Executive Director of Haitian Bridge Alliance. “Once again, U.S. immigration policy is being weaponized to deny entry, dignity, and basic human rights to people from countries that have long borne the brunt of colonialism, Western intervention, and economic extraction.”  This is the same administration that deports Black immigrants only to import White refugees from South Africa under the false claim of genocide.’’

The original travel bans, introduced during Trump’s first term, faced numerous legal challenges. In 2018, the Supreme Court upheld a version of the ban in Trump v. Hawaii, ruling that the president had broad authority over immigration matters. However, dissenting opinion,  Justice Sonia Sotomayor, highlighted the discriminatory intent behind the policy, drawing parallels to past injustices such as the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. 

“We cannot continue to normalize executive orders that single out Black, Brown, and Muslim-majority countries for exclusion,” added Jozef. “Congress must act by codifying guardrails that prevent the wholesale banning of nationals from entire regions of the world under the pretext of ‘national security.’ The fate of families, students, workers, and asylum seekers depends on it.

The Pan-African community — across the U.S., Africa, and the diaspora — must stand united against these draconian policies that echo a long history of Western exclusion and exploitation of the Global South.

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ABOUT HAITIAN BRIDGE ALLIANCE

Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA), also known as “The Bridge”, is a grassroots community organization that advocates for fair and humane immigration policies, foreign policy, and provides migrants and immigrants with humanitarian, legal, and social services, with a particular focus on Black migrants, the Haitian community, women and girls, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and survivors of torture and other human rights abuses. HBA also seeks to elevate the issues unique to Black migrants and builds solidarity and collective movement toward policy change. Anpil men chay pa lou (“Many hands make the load light”).
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