The United States Government has decided to subject the residence cards of Cuban and Venezuelan citizens to a “rigorous review,” including them on the list of 19 nationalities classified as “countries of concern.” The measure, confirmed this Thursday by the Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), represents a new step in criminalization by nationality and a strategy of persecution against specific migrant communities.
The executive order signed by President Donald Trump in June already prohibited or restricted travel from Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, in addition to imposing limitations on citizens of Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. Now, these same nationalities will be subject to an exhaustive review of their ‘green cards’, under the argument of “national security.”
The director of the USCIS, Joseph B. Edlow, announced that the measure will be applied after the shooting in Washington DC that left two National Guard soldiers injured, the alleged perpetrator of which was an Afghan citizen. “I have ordered a rigorous, full-scale review of every resident card of every foreigner from every country of concern,” Edlow stated in X.
The agency had already suspended immigration applications from Afghans, minutes after a message from Trump in which he blamed the immigration policies of his predecessor, Joe Biden, for the entry of the attacker.
Beyond the specific case, the new order translates into additional restrictions for Cubans and Venezuelans, communities that paradoxically showed support for Trump in the 2024 elections. The president has insisted on eliminating the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and the humanitarian parole program for these nationalities, along with Haitians and other migrant populations.
After the attack near the White House, Trump promised to further tighten immigration measures, calling the event “an act of hate.” However, critics point out that the official response constitutes a policy of collective targeting, which punishes entire communities for their national origin and deepens the stigmatization of migrants.
FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed that the Afghan suspect had worked for a CIA-backed military unit and arrived in the United States in 2021 under the Operation Allies Welcome program. Despite this, the Trump administration uses the case as justification to expand an exclusion policy that directly affects Cubans and Venezuelans legal residents in the country.
