The Trump Administration was busy this Thanksgiving drafting a new Policy Advisory titled, Additional National Security Measures for Immigrants Including Consideration of Country-Specific Factors. The details of the new policy are in the Policy Alert: Impact of INA 212(f) on USCIS’ Adjudication of Discretionary Benefits (PA-2025-26).
Countries Impacted: Afghanistan, Burma, Burundi, Chad, Republic of Congo, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, and Yemen.
This announcement comes just a day after the shooting of two National Guard service members in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, November 26, 2025, by an Afghan national. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued new guidance allowing for negative, country-specific factors to be considered when vetting aliens from 19 high-risk countries. This guidance comes after the Trump administration halted refugee resettlement from Afghanistan and the entry of Afghan nationals in its first year of office.
The updated guidance, including consideration of country-specific factors such as a country’s ability to issue secure identity documents is being touted as the furthering of President Trump’s Presidential Proclamation (PP) 10949, Restricting the Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats. It will allow USCIS officers to more meaningfully assess whether an alien is a threat to public safety and national security. This policy guidance is effective immediately and applies to requests pending or filed on or after November 27, 2025.
On June 5, 2025, the President issued PP 10949 to exercise his INA 212(f) authority and suspend the entry or admission of aliens from nineteen countries. See 90 FR 24497 (imposing a partial or full suspension of and limitation on entry on aliens from the following countries, based on a finding that such entry would be detrimental to the interests of the United States for country-specific reasons: Afghanistan, Burma, Burundi, Chad, Republic of Congo, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, and Yemen).
IMPORTANT: USCIS will treat the existence of country-specific factors (such as those specified in PP 10949) as significant negative factors in the adjudication of discretionary benefit requests.
This new policy is going to be controversial and will likely be challenged in the Courts as soon as the first person is denied an immigration benefit based on this new policy.
Country-specific inquiries for issues such as the liability of government documents are reasonable and it there are legitimate reasons why it would be necessary. Not all foreign governments’ documents are reliable. There are some countries where obtaining official government documents like birth certificates or marriage certificates is a trivial task that could be accomplished by anyone. Some governments are notorious for having unreliable documents even when the person is trying to obtain accurate documents.
The US Department of State already has policies addressing this though. This policy seems unnecessary and more concerning, it seems like this administration may use this policy as a way to discriminate against foreign nationals from certain parts of the world. This administration has been acting in bad faith in many instances, but on this issue they would not have to. The policy announcement states that it is being made in response to yesterday’s shooting in order to put stricter scrutiny on a list of specific countries.
People should be concerned about this since the isolated incident that occurred yesterday cannot possibly justify this. We have no information indicating that the shooter had bypassed our existing process by using fraudulent documents or that Afghanistan failed to provide information about criminal records or terrorist affiliation. This seems to be reactionary or even opportunistic. There is an old saying that a government should never let a tragedy go to waste because they are the most effective way of getting people to eagerly sacrifice some of their liberty for the illusion of safety.
Stephen Miller has been hyper-aware of the power of fear and has been quick to exploit tragedies to push his political agenda (the core of which is ending all immigration from South and Central America, and Africa, and limiting to the largest extent possible the immigration of any non-Christians from Asia). You might remember the “Muslim Travel Ban” from Trump’s first term in office, which was authored by Miller and is an example of him doing this. He did this after a young woman was murdered by an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador last year and again during the first month that Trump was back in office. Most recently, he has been using the assassination of the right wing provocateur, Charlie Kirk, which I’ve written about before.
Read the Full Policy Advisory.