Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s new ban on trav­el to the U.S. by cit­i­zens from 12 main­ly African and Mid­dle East­ern coun­tries is set to take ef­fect Mon­day amid es­ca­lat­ing ten­sion over the pres­i­dent’s un­prece­dent­ed cam­paign of im­mi­gra­tion en­force­ment.

The new procla­ma­tion, which Trump signed on Wednes­day, ap­plies to cit­i­zens of Afghanistan, Myan­mar, Chad, the Re­pub­lic of Con­go, Equa­to­r­i­al Guinea, Er­itrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, So­ma­lia, Su­dan and Yemen. It al­so im­pos­es height­ened re­stric­tions on peo­ple from Bu­run­di, Cu­ba, Laos, Sier­ra Leone, To­go, Turk­menistan and Venezuela who are out­side the U.S. and don’t hold a valid visa.

The new ban does not re­voke visas pre­vi­ous­ly is­sued to peo­ple from coun­tries on the list, ac­cord­ing to guid­ance is­sued Fri­day to all U.S. diplo­mat­ic mis­sions. How­ev­er, un­less an ap­pli­cant meets nar­row cri­te­ria for an ex­emp­tion to the ban, his or her ap­pli­ca­tion will be re­ject­ed start­ing Mon­day. Trav­el­ers with pre­vi­ous­ly is­sued visas should still be able to en­ter the U.S. even af­ter the ban takes ef­fect.

Hait­ian-Amer­i­can El­vanise Louis-Juste, who was at the air­port Sun­day in Newark, New Jer­sey, await­ing a flight to her home state of Flori­da, said many Haitians want­i­ng to come to the U.S. are sim­ply seek­ing to es­cape vi­o­lence and un­rest in their coun­try.

“I have fam­i­ly in Haiti, so it’s pret­ty up­set­ting to see and hear,” Louis-Juste, 23, said of the trav­el ban. “I don’t think it’s a good thing. I think it’s very up­set­ting.”

Many im­mi­gra­tion ex­perts say the new ban is de­signed to beat any court chal­lenge by fo­cus­ing on the visa ap­pli­ca­tion process and ap­pears more care­ful­ly craft­ed than a hasti­ly writ­ten ex­ec­u­tive or­der dur­ing Trump’s first term that de­nied en­try to cit­i­zens of main­ly Mus­lim coun­tries.

In a video post­ed Wednes­day on so­cial me­dia, Trump said na­tion­als of coun­tries in­clud­ed in the ban pose “ter­ror­ism-re­lat­ed” and “pub­lic-safe­ty” risks, as well as risks of over­stay­ing their visas. He al­so said some of these coun­tries had “de­fi­cient” screen­ing and vet­ting or have his­tor­i­cal­ly re­fused to take back their cit­i­zens.

His find­ings re­ly ex­ten­sive­ly on an an­nu­al Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty re­port about tourists, busi­ness­peo­ple and stu­dents who over­stay U.S. visas and ar­rive by air or sea, sin­gling out coun­tries with high per­cent­ages of na­tion­als who re­main af­ter their visas ex­pired.

Trump al­so tied the new ban to a ter­ror­ist at­tack in Boul­der, Col­orado, say­ing it un­der­scored the dan­gers posed by some vis­i­tors who over­stay visas. The man charged in the at­tack is from Egypt, a coun­try that is not on Trump’s re­strict­ed list. U.S. of­fi­cials say he over­stayed a tourist visa.

The ban was quick­ly de­nounced by groups that pro­vide aid and re­set­tle­ment help to refugees.

“This pol­i­cy is not about na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty — it is about sow­ing di­vi­sion and vil­i­fy­ing com­mu­ni­ties that are seek­ing safe­ty and op­por­tu­ni­ty in the Unit­ed States,” said Ab­by Max­man, pres­i­dent of Ox­fam Amer­i­ca, a non­prof­it in­ter­na­tion­al re­lief or­ga­ni­za­tion.

Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro’s gov­ern­ment con­demned the trav­el ban, char­ac­ter­iz­ing it in a state­ment as a “stigma­ti­za­tion and crim­i­nal­iza­tion cam­paign” against Venezue­lans. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)