The list of countries banned by the Trump administration’s newest order seems to have no rhyme or reason. Little connects Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, all targeted for a total ban, or Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela, all targeted for restrictions. The reasoning stated in the order is that they all pose security threats measured by “whether each country has a significant terrorist presence within its territory, its visa-overstay rate, and its cooperation with accepting back its removable nationals”.

Visa overstays, the order elaborates, “indicates a blatant disregard for United States immigration laws”. Yet the latest data on overstays from Customs and Border Protection does show these countries high on the list, along with others not included.

If we sit with this list a little longer, though, with attention to the history of the world we share, we can see a different unifying logic. All of these countries are in the global south, their citizens are racialized as Black or brown and Muslim. Most have high poverty rates that hover at or above half their population. Several have recently been sites of social upheaval or horrific wars. Yemen, Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan, for example, all appear on the World Food Program’s list of the world’s

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