WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has paused immigration applications from 19 countries it deemed high-risk in the wake of an attack on two National Guard members in the nation's capital by a suspected shooter of Afghan nationality.

A memorandum released by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services late on the evening of Dec. 2 ordered a halt in the processing of immigration documents such as green cards from the nations that President Donald Trump had fully or partially banned travel to the U.S. from earlier this year.

In June, Trump banned travel from 12 of those countries, with limited exceptions. Another seven had partial restrictions imposed. Afghanistan was one of the dozen countries that faced a near-full travel ban.

Nationals from Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela also faced full or partial travel restrictions.

The memorandum is part of a sweeping crackdown on legal immigration to the U.S. from countries whose nationals Trump has said he does not want coming to America since the shooting that left one National Guard member dead and the other in critical condition.

The agency said it would reexamine green cards issued to nationals from countries of concern and DHS said it would review all asylum cases approved by the Biden administration in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said on Nov. 30 that the department will also pause the processing of new asylum applications while it deals with a backlog.

Trump told reporters that evening that the administration's pause on asylum applications could last a long time.

"We don't want those people. We have enough problems," Trump said on Air Force One. "Many of them are no good, and they shouldn't be in our country."

Trump said he was referring to "crime-ridden countries" and "countries that don’t do a good job" after he was pressed to say which countries' nationals he was invoking. He repeatedly singled out the African nation of Somalia.

Noem said the following day that she'd pushed for an expansion of the travel ban in a conversation with Trump.

"I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that's been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies," she said in an X post. Noem also said "foreign invaders" were in the U.S. to "slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits" that are meant for American citizens.

DHS did not respond to requests for clarification on which countries Noem wanted to extend the ban to include.

The State Department, which handles visa processing, directed questions to the White House and DHS on potential policy changes involving entry to the United States.

Contributing: Bart Jansen, USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: US halts immigration applications from 19 countries on travel ban list

Reporting by Francesca Chambers, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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