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Though US President Donald Trump’s threat to freeze migration from Third World countries may be more bluster than law, it risks accelerating shutting a quiet door that is already closing to Africa
Washington, US | AGENCIES | US President Donald Trump’s vow to “permanently pause” migration from what he called “Third World countries” is feared to herald an even broader ban on African migrants, tightening a system already stacked against the continent.
Posted on Truth Social on Nov.27 after an Afghani national who had worked with the US military shot two National Guard members in Washington, DC, the announcement promised a sweeping freeze on admissions from vast stretches of the Global South.
This is in addition to the cancellation of ‘millions’ of Biden-era approvals. It also vowed to strip non-citizens of federal benefits and subsidies and even denaturalise migrants deemed ‘non-compatible with Western civilisation’.
But behind the headline-grabbing language, some experts say nothing has legally changed, arguing that Trump’s vow is still just rhetoric, with no executive order, no proclamation and no use of the powers needed to make it real.
That, they say, leaves the administration’s earlier actions as the operative policy, which already cast a long shadow over African migration.
But that assertion is countered by Federico Manfredi Firmian, a foreign policy expert and research fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies, who argues that the absence of a formal law doesn’t prevent “rapid administrative action”.
Africa already on the front line of Trump restrictions
In June, the White House reinstated and expanded a nationality-based travel ban that fully blocks most entry categories for 12 countries, seven of them in Africa: Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Libya, Somalia and Sudan.
For nationals of these states, consular officers have minimal discretion. A second tier of states – Burundi, Sierra Leone and Togo – face partial restrictions affecting certain visa classes. Refusal rates have since surged, and even routine applications have become mired in administrative hold.
Then came the leaked State Department memorandum signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The document lists 36 countries flagged for potential escalation if they fail to meet security and document-verification benchmarks – 25 of them are African.
They range from the continent’s largest economies, including Nigeria, Egypt and Ethiopia, to smaller states such as Cabo Verde, Uganda and Zambia. Although the memo stops short of imposing bans, it explicitly signals the possibility of visa restrictions or full travel suspensions. For many African governments and diaspora groups, it has functioned as a de facto blacklist.
Against this backdrop, Trump’s rhetoric about a ‘Third World’ pause lands less as an entirely new threat than as an intensification and possible widening of a framework already under construction.
However, Trump’s latest announcement is more than political theatre, according to Firmian. “This new ‘pause’ is another clear signal that migration to the United States from the Global South is getting harder, with several pathways now being frozen or effectively shut off,” he tells The Africa Report.
What a ‘Third World’ pause might actually mean
If the administration treated ‘Third World’ as shorthand for ‘developing countries’, almost the entire African continent would fall under a single catch-all label. But the White House doesn’t need a sweeping ban to achieve the same political effect.
Politically, the ambiguity gives the administration maximum room to escalate without the diplomatic blowback that a formal proclamation would trigger. It lets officials quietly widen restrictions across the 36 ‘at-risk’ states while insisting they haven’t imposed a continent-wide freeze.
Rather than an outright prohibition, which would almost certainly be struck down as arbitrary and discriminatory, officials are expected to replicate the June 2025 playbook: country-specific dossiers alleging vetting gaps, security risks and bureaucratic failures, dressed up with narrow waivers to signal restraint.
That pathway allows Washington to tighten the screws on African and other migration through rising refusal rates for students, visitors, professionals and family-based applicants, shrinking legal pathways while preserving the appearance of a rules-based process.
Voiding asylum
Trump’s most sweeping promises – shutting down asylum or cancelling African protections en masse – run straight into statutory guardrails Congress built into the system. Under law, anyone on US soil or at its border has the right to seek asylum, reinforced by the non-refoulement rule that bars Washington from sending people back to places where they face persecution.
Those limits were brought into sharp focus in July 2025, when a federal judge halted Trump’s bid to ‘completely shut down’ asylum at the southern border after the administration declared an ‘invasion’ and froze the US Customs and Border Protection One system.
That makes it virtually impossible for the White House to void African asylum claims wholesale. Legal experts say it can make screening more onerous, expand detention and slow cases to a standstill but cannot legally erase claims in bulk.
The real vulnerability lies outside US territory. Trump’s January 2025 orders, though partially blocked, have already stranded thousands in northern Mexico, shut down refugee flights and frozen the US Refugee Admissions Programme.
For African refugees in camps in Kenya, Rwanda or the Sahel, the pipeline has collapsed. A formal ‘Third World’ pause would lock that closure in place and raise the political cost of reversing it, even if courts later curb the administration’s reach.
Can African green-card holders or US citizens lose their status?
Trump’s latest escalation – abruptly announcing an end to legal protections for Somali residents in Minnesota and urging authorities to “send them back to where they came from” – has sent shockwaves through African communities across the US.
In his Truth Social post, he claimed Minnesota was a “hub of fraudulent money laundering activity” under Governor Tim Walz and announced the immediate termination of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) programme for Somalis in the state. Walz dismissed the move as predictable scapegoating, saying the president was “broadly targeting an entire community” to shift attention.
Minnesota hosts the largest Somali population in the country, with roughly 79,000 residents, though only 705 Somalis nationwide currently hold TPS, according to Congressional data. Many in the community fear that the president’s rhetoric presages something more sweeping, including threats to green-card holders and even naturalised citizens.
But the legal firewall protecting permanent residents and citizens remains substantial. Green-card holders can only be removed through individual proceedings based on defined statutory grounds, such as certain criminal convictions or demonstrable immigration fraud.
Naturalised citizens can be stripped of citizenship only if the government proves they lied about material facts during naturalisation. Political views, activism or national origin are not grounds for denaturalisation, no matter the campaign language.
Where the administration does have greater freedom is in temporary humanitarian protections and parole programmes, which can be narrowed, paused or terminated — as the Minnesota decision illustrates. But even the most aggressive use of executive power cannot deliver Trump’s promise to ‘cancel millions’ of admissions.
However, the government has broad authority to slow or suspend visas and refugee processing, review existing green cards and revoke benefits, Firmian says. “Once implementing guidance is issued, many Africans with pending applications or existing status could face delays, denials or even removal.”
Efforts to unduly politicise migration
Uche Igwe, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), says Trump’s rhetoric fits a wider pattern, describing it as “a very myopic oversimplification” of migration, which has become “far more complex”.
“It is part of ongoing efforts to unduly politicise migration and unfairly blame migrants for many of the negative things happening in these countries,” he tells The Africa Report, pointing to the UK, where the Labour government has also moved to tighten immigration rules.
“I hope that this new wave of hostilities will force African countries to look inwards and allow the leaders to develop their countries such that their citizens will stop believing that their salvation and prosperity lie somewhere in the West where they are not wanted,” Igwe says.
