Van Hollen Releases New State Department Data on Travel Ban

Today, U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen released new travel ban statistics from the U.S. Department of State, which were made available because of the provision he authored requiring the State Department to provide detailed information on this de facto Muslim ban. The data, which spans from December 2017 to March 2019, reflects approximately 5.1 percent of subject applicants having been issued a visa pursuant to the waiver process.  That’s even lower than the 6 percent they had previously reported.

“The Trump Travel Ban was bad on day one and is only getting worse. This data makes it abundantly clear that the waiver process is a sham and that the ban has nothing to do with national security,” said Senator Van Hollen. “We must overturn this bigoted policy – every day that it remains plays into the hands of our enemies.”

Senator Van Hollen has consistently raised concerns about the executive order and pushed for more data on the program, making some of the first statistics publicly available in March of last year. The full text of the report is available here.

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