Washington reveals all visas for South Sudanese passport holders and blocks newcomers, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Saturday, complaining that the African nation does not accept its expelled nationals from the United States.
The State Department “takes measures to revoke all the visas held by Sudanese southern passport holders and prevent a new program to prevent entry,” Rubio said in a statement.
It was the first measure of this type that has distinguished all passport holders from a private country since Donald Trump returned to the White House on January 20, after campaigning on an anti-immigration platform.
Rubio accused the transitional government in Juba of “taking advantage of the United States”, saying that “each country must accept the return of its citizens in a timely time where another country … seeks to remove them”.
Washington “will be ready to examine these actions when South Sudan is in the midst of cooperation,” added Rubio.
The most recent country in the world and also one of the poorest, South Sudan currently preveses out to tensions between political leaders.
Some observers fear a renewal of the civil war which killed 400,000 people between 2013 and 2018.
South-Soudanais nationals had obtained a “temporary protection status” (TPS) by the administration of the predecessor of Trump, Joe Biden, the designation which expires on May 3, 2025.
The United States grants TP, which protect people from expulsion, to foreign citizens who cannot go back to home due to war, natural disasters or other “extraordinary” conditions.
There were about 133 Sudanese from the South in the United States as part of the TPS program, with 140 other eligible to apply, the Ministry of Internal Security said in September 2023.
But Trump’s White House began to overthrow TPS designations, revoking protection in January by more than 600,000 Venezuelans.
A federal judge this week suspended this decision after questioning the government’s allegations that the majority of Venezuelans in the United States were criminals.
According to the Pew Research Center, in March 2024, there were 1.2 million eligible people or receiving TP in the United States, the Venezuelans making up the largest group.
The simple simple of Sudan of the Trump administration also occurs after the growing number of Africans have tried to enter the United States via its southern border – an alternative to risky roads in Europe.
