Donald Trump has pledged to reinstate the contentious travel ban, which had targeted numerous primarily Muslim nations, should he win reelection, during a speech at a Republican Jewish convention.
“We will keep radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of our country,” Trump said on Saturday.
“You remember the travel ban? On day one I will restore our travel ban,” he told the audience attending the annual summit of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
The former US leader was among several Republicans lining up at the gathering of influential Jewish donors to pledge unwavering support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
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Trump told the event, held in Las Vegas, in the southwestern state of Nevada, that he would “defend our friend and ally in the State of Israel like nobody has ever.”
At the start of his presidency in 2017, Trump imposed sweeping restrictions on the entry of travellers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and, initially, Iraq and Sudan.
The order was quickly challenged in court as discriminatory against a religious group, but the bans, along with Trump’s hard-line anti-immigration agenda, were popular with his base.
President Joe Biden reversed the ban in his first week in office in 2021.