Trump administration bars all South Sudanese citizens from entering or staying in U.S.

 The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has banned all South Sudanese citizens from entering or staying in the United States, its first sweeping prohibition on the nationals of any foreign country.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he is imposing the ban because South Sudan’s government had failed “to accept the return of its repatriated citizens in a timely manner” after their deportation from the United States.

Another U.S. official said, however, that the ban was based on a single case of one deportee who was refused entry to South Sudan. Local media in the country said the man was not a South Sudanese citizen but a Congolese man who was denied entry because he had a serious criminal record.

Mr. Trump imposed a series of visa bans in his first presidential term, but this is the first such ban on citizens of an entire country in his current administration. It is more sweeping than his first-term actions because it also revokes the existing visas of all South Sudan passport-holders in the United States, rather than simply banning their future entry.

It is time for South Sudan to “stop taking advantage of the United States,” Mr. Rubio said in a statement on Saturday. He said he was imposing the ban on South Sudanese because their government had rejected the principle that it must accept the return of its citizens when they are deported.

“Effective immediately, all visa appointments are cancelled, no new visas will be issued, no existing visas will be effective, and hence NO ONE from South Sudan will be entering the United States on a visa until this matter is resolved,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said in a social-media post.

He said the South Sudan government had refused to accept “one of their nationals certified by their own embassy in Washington and repatriated to their country.”

The government of South Sudan, embroiled in a political and military crisis for the past several weeks, did not make any immediate comment on the U.S. action.

A local media outlet, Juba Daily News, said the saga began when the Trump administration wanted to deport 24 individuals to South Sudan. After background checks, South Sudan’s embassy identified three of them as citizens of other countries. It agreed to accept two deportees from Somalia and Sudan but refused to accept the Congolese citizen because he was “a known criminal,” the media outlet said. “This action angered U.S. authorities.”

It posted a video of a man at a local airport who said the United States had wrongly tried to deport him to South Sudan. The man, who identified himself as Makula Kintu, said his parents were from South Sudan but he was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

South Sudan, the world’s youngest country and one of its poorest, has been ravaged by internal wars and widespread malnutrition for most of the 14 years since it gained independence from Sudan.

Critics said the U.S. decision to revoke visas would punish ordinary South Sudanese, including refugees, for the actions of their government. “I am trying to control the moral revolt that this despicable statement makes me feel,” said Ricardo Hausmann, a Harvard University professor of economic development, in a social-media post.

Among those who could be affected by the visa revocations is a U.S. college basketball star, Khaman Maluach of Duke University, who was born in South Sudan and was expected to be a top pick in this year’s National Basketball Association draft. A Duke spokesperson, Frank Tramble, told journalists that the university is aware of the visa announcement and is looking into the implications for its students.

Mr. Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, gave “temporary protected status” (TPS) to some South Sudanese citizens in the United States to shield them against deportation because of the conflicts and famine in their home country. But the Trump administration has begun reversing TPS designations for some countries, including Venezuela.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-trump-administration-bars-all-south-sudanese-citizens-from-entering-or/