One of President Donald Trump's acts during his first term was the so-called Muslim ban. Building on a 2015 campaign promise to enact "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on," he banned all entry by seven Muslim-majority nationalities. After extensive court battles and airport chaos, the ban list shifted around and grew to include some non-Muslim adversary countries.
Trump has promised to "bring back the travel ban" in his second term and ordered the State Department to identify countries whose security situation would "warrant a partial or full suspension on the admission of nationals." The new proposed ban list was leaked to The New York Times over the weekend. Along with classic adversaries such as Iran and North Korea, and war-torn countries such as Syria and Yemen, the list also includes the tranquil Himalayan mountain kingdom of Bhutan.
The Land of the Thunder Dragon, an isolated country of less than 800,000 people, doesn't have any internal or external wars at the moment. It suffers from "relatively little crime," according to the U.S. State Department's own reports. Although there is no U.S. embassy (and almost no other foreign embassy) in Bhutan, the U.S. ambassador to neighboring India "maintains frequent and friendly communications with the Royal Bhutanese Embassy in New Delhi," the State Department reports.
