U.S President Joe Biden on his first day in office signed a series of executive actions to reverse the policies of Donald Trump administration on immigration and others.
Hours after taking the office, Biden issued an executive order to end Trump’s controversial ‘Muslim travel ban’, which blocked travel to the United States from several predominantly Muslim and African countries.
During Trump’s first week in office in 2017, he implemented the Muslim Ban initially restricted travel from seven Muslim-majority nations: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
The ban faced several legal challenges, but the Supreme Court upheld the measure in 2018.
In February 2020, Trump later expanded the ban to include additional restrictions on citizens of six more countries: Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania.
President Biden has now directed the State Department to restart immigration visa processing for individuals from the affected countries and to develop ways to address the harm caused to those who were prevented from coming to the United States because of the ban, The New York Times reported.
Ending the ban was one of Biden’s top campaign promises on immigration policy, and he has now delivered.
The American Civil Liberties Union, a non-profit civil rights organisation, applauded the move calling the Trump travel policy a “cruel Muslim ban that targeted Africans.”