A human rights group has warned a travel ban on 12 countries imposed by Donald Trump will disproportionately affect LGBTQ+ people and other vulnerable groups.

The 78-year-old US president signed a proclamation in the early hours of Thursday (5 May) banning travel to the US for nationals of several countries.

Countries whose citizens are now banned from entering the US are Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.

The White House cited several national security concerns in a statement after Trump signed the travel ban, claiming it would help protect the US from “foreign terrorists.”

But the proclamation was described as “truly punitive” by Human Rights First attorney, Robyn Barnard, who said the US is trying to punish the countries on the travel ban list. 

Speaking to BBC World Service, Barnard, who describes herself as an “immigrant several times over,” said the travel ban mirrors an executive order signed during Trump’s first term in 2017 which banned citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen for 90 days.

“There is no clear thread between each,” she said, noting the only “commonalities” between the two travel bans are that several of the countries have “restrictive policies against women and girls and [LGBTQ+] individuals and others,” the travel ban will make it impossible for these discriminated-against groups to “reunite with loved ones in the US”, in the words of Human Rights First. 

She continued: “It really feels like it’s about punishment and creating more chaos and dysfunction in our immigration system.”

Hours after Trump signed the travel ban, the US president wrote on his Truth Social platform: “We don’t want them.”

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He cited a recent attack in Boulder Colorado in which 45-year-old Mohamed Sabry Soliman threw a set of Molotov cocktails into a crowd of protestors, injuring at least 15 people, according to AP.

Mr Soliman, who was being held by Colorado Police on a $10 million cash-only bond, is an Egyptian national; a country which does not appear on Trump’s travel ban.

Regardless, Trump wrote that the attack “underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted,” as well as those who “come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas.”

On the same day, the president also signed an executive order restricting the right for foreign students to study at Harvard University under temporary visas.