The Trump administration is barring American citizens who were recently in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where there is an ongoing Ebola outbreak, from returning to the U.S. until they’ve spent 21 days in a third country, a U.S. official confirmed to POLITICO Tuesday.
In an effort to prevent Ebola from entering the U.S., the Trump administration began using federal transportation law on Monday to “place any American citizens who have been in the DRC on a Do-Not-Board list for any commercial flights heading into the United States,” the official said.
Reuters first reported the news. POLITICO granted the official anonymity in order to confirm Reuters’ report.
Do-not-board lists are generally intended to prevent travelers “known or suspected to have a contagious disease” that poses a public health threat from taking commercial flights, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The decision follows a pattern of the Trump administration imposing unusually stringent travel restrictions related to the outbreak. In May, the administration blocked green card holders reentering the U.S. if they had recently been in the Congo. The administration also took an unusually stringent approach in quarantining Americans who’d been aboard a cruise ship with a deadly outbreak of hantavirus this spring. They were kept at a government facility in Nebraska for weeks. One passenger who wanted to leave said she was held against her will.
During an outbreak in West Africa that started in 2013 and grew to be the largest on record, the Obama administration did not implement travel bans, only diverting travelers who were recently in affected countries to certain airports for screening. The Trump administration had been doing the same for U.S. citizen travelers, naming in May four airports in Virginia, New York, Texas and Georgia that could screen arriving passengers.
The administration’s approach has reignited a debate over travel restrictions and infectious disease. Many global health bodies, including the World Health Organization, argue that travel restrictions usually do more harm than good, creating stigma, hurting local economies and discouraging countries from being transparent about infectious disease outbreaks.
It’s unclear if the restrictions apply to U.S. government employees and contractors, and the White House did not immediately respond to questions about the scope of the ban. The CDC has at least two dozen employees working in the agency’s Congo office.
The decision was based on a new risk assessment by the federal government, which showed increased spread of the virus closer to the Congo’s capital, Kinshasa. As of July 11, there have been nearly 2,000 recorded cases of Ebola in the Congo, and 702 confirmed deaths.
Roughly two dozen American citizens were set to board flights Tuesday to the U.S. after having been in the Congo, the official said, adding that the State Department “will be working with these individuals to assist their 21-day waiting period before they can board a commercial flight back home.” The official did not specify where that waiting period will take place.
Key context: Trump administration has expressed confidence about keeping cases of Ebola out of the U.S.
In May, the administration initiated a plan to set up a facility in Kenya — a country that has never recorded an Ebola case — to house Americans exposed to Ebola, rather than bring them home. That plan was met with a sharp backlash from many Kenyans, who protested the facility. The Kenyan government halted construction of the facility after a Kenyan court blocked the plan.
Two Americans have contracted Ebola in the outbreak so far and were sent to Germany for treatment.