The Trump administration is considering a sweeping ban on travel to the U.S. from members of the Chinese Communist Party and their family members, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
The presidential proclamation is still in its draft form, and President Trump might ultimately reject it, The Times noted, citing unnamed sources.
The reported draft ban may also authorize the U.S. to revoke visas of party members and their families who are already in the country, the Times reported.
The order would cite the same statute in the Immigration and Nationality Act the Trump administration used in 2017 as part of a travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries, according to the Times. The statute gives the president power to temporarily block travel to the U.S. by foreign nationals who are deemed “detrimental to the interest” of the country.
A White House official was not immediately available for comment when contacted by The Hill.
The reported draft proposal would pose practical issues, as the Chinese Communist Party has 92 million members and the U.S. government has no knowledge of a party status for a vast majority of the millions of Chinese citizens who visit the U.S., the Times notes.
At times Trump has been critical of China, including on trade and the Chinese government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which originated in Wuhan.
Former White House national security adviser John Bolton, however, claims in his new memoir “The Room Where It Happened,” that Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping for help winning reelection.
Bolton also claims he heard Trump acknowledge the massive crowds at demonstrations in Hong Kong in the summer of 2019 but demurred that he didn’t want to get involved and said the president also downplayed the need to issue a White House statement on the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.