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President Donald Trump is banning travelers from 12 countries and partially restricting travelers from seven others, starting on Monday. He announced the ban Wednesday in a proclamation that said the move will protect U.S. national security.

It’s an echo of Trump’s first term, when he signed an executive order blocking travelers from seven majority-Muslim countries. That ban led to protests at airports around the country, including in Minnesota, and a lengthy court battle. 

Mitchell Hamline School of Law Professor Ana Pottratz Acosta joined Minnesota Now to provide insight into the latest ban. 

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

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The proclamation names 19 countries. Can you tell us who will be affected and what patterns you are seeing?

There are two groups of countries that have been identified in the presidential proclamation that was issued yesterday. There are 12 countries where travel is completely suspended. That would include travel on an immigrant visa or permanent resident visa, as well as travel on a temporary visa, or the legal term is non-citizen visa. 

And the 12 countries where there's a complete ban are Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. 

And there’s a more limited ban on seven additional countries — Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela — that restricts immigrant visas or permanent resident visas, and certain categories of temporary visas, including tourist visas and student visas.

Do you have a sense for why the Trump administration broke it down that way?

What’s interesting when you look at the list of countries and then in the presidential proclamation, there is sort of a rationale behind why each of the countries is selected. So it appears to me that to the extent possible, they’re trying to follow the letter of the law as set forth in Trump v. Hawaii, the Supreme Court decision that upheld the travel ban in 2018.

Particularly for the countries where there’s a total ban, they lay out national security concerns as well as the number of individuals who overstay their visas. The overstay seems like an important metric, both for countries with a complete ban as well as the seven countries with a partial ban. Looking at this list, Somalia stands out to me as people who might be impacted here in Minnesota.

What are you hearing from clients and people in your network about this?

I think there’s a lot of fear and uncertainty, particularly for individuals who have sponsored a family member to come to the United States. One distinction from the previous travel ban during the first Trump administration is that the exemptions from the travel ban are significantly more broad compared to the last time around. 

For example, if you are being sponsored for permanent residence by your parent or your spouse, or if you're a child over 21 sponsoring your parent, you’re exempt from the ban, according to my reading. 

Additionally — and this is something that I know has been a cause for concern nationally, considering that the United States is hosting both the World Cup in 2026 as well as the Olympics in 2028 — there is an exemption for international athletes. But what's interesting is that the exemption for athletes has to be approved by the Secretary of State, or it appears there's some discretion where the burden would be on the athlete to show that they're eligible for the exemption. 

What did your work entail under the previous ban?

One of my main teaching responsibilities at Mitchell Hamline is teaching the Health Law Clinic. We represent immigrants in their immigration cases, including helping people who are sponsoring a family member who lives overseas to enter as a permanent resident. One of the things we saw was that we needed to assist families or immediate relatives with filing a waiver of the travel ban. 

The burden was on the family member to show significant hardship, be it health-related hardship, or mental health or economic hardship, that allowed them to qualify for an exemption so that their family member could come to the United States in spite of being subject to the travel ban. 

I suspect that we're probably going to see some of that with this new iteration, where the burden will be on the applicant or their family member to show eligibility, either for an exemption or for a waiver. 

Do you expect there to be legal challenges to the ban?

I would guess that there probably will be a legal challenge to this iteration of the travel ban, particularly some of the basis for placing some of the countries on the list. There may be litigation if there is a denial or a finding that someone's not eligible for an exemption under the listed exemptions to this travel ban. 

But the challenge this time around is that we have a Supreme Court decision in Trump v. Hawaii from 2018 that gave the president very broad power under the immigration law and under the Constitution to impose a travel ban, so long as the president provided a rational basis for why the travel ban needs to be put in place.

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President Donald Trump is banning travelers from twelve countries and partially restricting travelers from seven others, starting on Monday. 

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