The new list of countries that could face visa bans or other restrictions includes 25 African nations, as well as countries in the Caribbean, Central Asia and several Pacific island nations, according to a State Department memo obtained by The Washington Post and released on Monday.
Signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the document was sent on Saturday to US diplomats working with the 36 countries in question.
The memo states that the administrations of the targeted states will have 60 days to comply with the new requirements set by the State Department.
According to The Washington Post, the countries were given until Wednesday to submit an initial action plan to comply with the requirements.
The countries identified in the memo that could face a full or partial travel ban are: Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Ethiopia, Egypt, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, South Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tonga, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The memo identified several criteria that the U.S. government assessed were not being met by these states.
Some countries had "no competent or cooperative central government authority to produce reliable identity or other civil documents" or suffered from "widespread government fraud," the State Department said. Others had large numbers of citizens who had overstayed their visas in the United States, the memo said.
The document also noted that these concerns could be alleviated if a government were willing to accept third-country nationals who were expelled from the United States.
These 36 states could join 12 others that earlier this month had their citizens' entry restricted on U.S. soil: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
In addition, the Trump administration has also partially restricted the entry of travelers from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela, in an escalation of its aggressive crackdown on immigration.
The US administration, which has been implementing a very restrictive anti-immigration policy under President Donald Trump, explained the countries' presence on this list by the lack of effective administrations to ensure the control of travelers and by the tendency of citizens of certain countries to remain in the United States after their visas have expired.
According to Trump's order, the first 12 countries targeted for a total ban "are deficient in terms of detection and control and pose a very high risk to the United States."
