The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has included Liberia on a list of 36 countries whose citizens could be banned from traveling to the US according to a draft memo obtained by The Washington Post, a U.S. media outlet.
By Anthony Stephens, senior correspondent with New Narratives
The memo “signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and sent Saturday to U.S. diplomats who work with the countries,” said the governments of Liberia and 35 other countries, including Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Ivory Coast and The Gambia “were being given 60 days to meet new benchmarks and requirements established by the State Department. It set a deadline of 8 a.m. Wednesday for them to provide an initial action plan for meeting the requirements.”
According to the Post, the memo cited a range of factors that put the countries on the list. Some had “no competent or cooperative central government authority to produce reliable identity documents or other civil documents,” or they suffered from “widespread government fraud.” Others had large numbers of citizens who overstayed their visas. Liberia has one of the highest rates of visa overstays. A 2023 report from the U.S. Homeland Security Department said one in every four Liberians who visited the country on visas overstayed. Liberian journalists who travelled to the U.S. recently said they were bombarded by Liberians in the U.S. advising them to overstay.
Immigration has been a major concern for the Trump administration, with US Ambassador to Liberia, Mark Toner, warning in a commentary in April that anyone who attempted entering the U.S. “illegally, lie to get a visa, work without legal permission, or stay in the United States after your visa or visa waiver period expires, will face serious penalties.”
He said they could include “jail time, deportation, and a permanent ban on obtaining a U.S. visa in the future.” The move would be an escalation for the Trump administration, which last week, began enforcing travel restrictions on a citizens from number of countries, including Sierra Leone, Liberia’s neighbor. At the same time the administration is putting pressure on U.S. immigration officials to arrest and deport at least 3,000 people in the country illegally each day.
Among the ways countries could avoid being on the banned list, according to the memo, was to accept third-country nationals who were removed from the United States or enter a “safe third country” agreement. Numerous countries including South Sudan and El Salvador have acquiesced to U.S. pressure or financial inducements to accept people being deported from the U.S.
Madam Sara Beysolow Nyanti, Liberia’s Foreign Minister, admitted the issue was a concern, telling FPA/NN in WhatsApp messages that she and other Liberian officials “are engaging on the issues of which we are informed that the Liberian overstay rate is one of the highest.”
“Ours is higher than even Sierra Leone which is already partially banned,” said Nyanti, who held a meeting in May in Washington with US Deputy Secretary of State, Christopher Landau, on immigration and other issues.
In a Facebook post about the meeting, the Liberian Foreign Ministry said the two officials also “discussed opportunities to deepen U.S-Liberia cooperation on migration and other issues and looked forward to a planned US-Liberia partnership dialogue slated for July 2025 in Monrovia.”
The Foreign Ministry said Nyanti and Landau “shared perspectives on the importance Liberia’s foreign policy push on economic diplomacy which aligns with that of President Trump” during their meeting in May.
The travel bans reflect a major foreign policy shift under the Trump administration which has shut down USAID and cut 90 precent of foreign aid, with serious repercussions for heavily aid dependent countries like Liberia. Embassies have been told to prioritize immigration control and business deals for American companies. The only major deal for an American company on the table in Liberia is Ivanhoe Atlantic, formerly known as HPX, to develop the so-called “Liberty Corridor”, a multiuser rail line connecting iron ore mines of Guinea with a new deep-water port in Didia, Liberia.
This story is a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the “Investigating Liberia” project. Funding was provided by the Swedish Embassy in Liberia. The funder had no say in the story’s content.
