US President Donald Trump has added new countries to the renewal of his travel ban which expired at the weekend.
The new ban covers three extra countries, taking the number of affected countries to eight.
The extra countries are North Korea, Venezuela and Chad.
These are added to the five outlawed nations of Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya.
The White House had mooted Iraq to join the list, but now, travellers to the US holding Iraqi passports are subject to extra checks at ports and airports.
I’m making America safe, says Trump
The new executive order will come into force from October 18 and is open-ended, unlike the previous orders, which prevented travel for 90 days and refugees from entering the US for 120 days.
The White House also explained that the ban on travellers from North Korea was not expected to involve many as few people travel between the countries.
“Making America safe is my number one priority. We will not admit those into our country we cannot safely vet,” said the president.
Homeland Security officials in Washington are believed to have written to ministers in more than 150 countries outlining the details of the ban and asking them to allow the US access to information about travellers.
If a country declined or could not supply the requested information, the department added them to the list of banned nations.
“North Korea, quite bluntly, does not cooperate whatsoever,” one official said.
Senseless and cruel
Campaigners against the ban complained about the renewal and the addition of more countries and threatened to challenge the measure in court.
A hearing is still due at the Supreme Court in October to consider if the first ban was discrimination against Muslims.
Trump already lost several court battles delaying his first efforts at a ban before the matter was upheld in a Supreme Court appeal.
“Just because the original ban was especially outrageous does not mean we should stand for yet another version of government-sanctioned discrimination,” said Amnesty International USA.
“It is senseless and cruel to ban whole nationalities of people who are often fleeing the very same violence that the U.S. government wishes to keep out. This must not be normalised.”
