Rep. Nancy Mace will introduce the Third World Immigration Moratorium Act on Wednesday, a bill that would bar people from 39 countries from entering the United States and block entry for those traveling on Palestinian Authority-issued documents.
The proposal lands as Mace pushes the same hard line in public that she is putting into legislation. She said the bill mirrors the list of countries already facing full or partial restrictions under the Trump administration and framed entry as a privilege, not a right. “For too long, Washington has looked the other way while bad actors exploited every gap in our system and American families paid the price,” she said.
The bill names countries across the Caribbean, Middle East and Africa, including Afghanistan, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burma, Burundi, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Cuba, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon, Gambia, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Republic of the Congo, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe. That is the same broad geography the administration has used in its own travel restrictions, and the list is meant to track those limits rather than create a narrower version.
Mace tied the push to a broader argument about immigration, saying, “If you import the third world, you will become the third world,” and adding, “We make absolutely no apologies for defending it.” Her proposal also goes further than a simple country ban by sweeping in Palestinian Authority-issued documents, a sign that the bill is aimed at travel routes as well as national passports.
The timing matters because the Trump administration revived a travel ban on 12 countries in June 2025 and then moved later to expand the list by more than double after an Afghan national fatally shot Sarah Beckstrom and severely injured Andrew Wolfe in Washington, D.C., in November. An Egyptian national was also charged in a deadly firebombing attack in Boulder, Colo., on demonstrators calling for the release of hostages in Gaza. Those cases have become part of the political case for tighter screening, even as Mace’s bill reaches further by seeking to codify a wider ban in the House.
What happens next is straightforward: Mace plans to introduce the measure Wednesday. Whether it gets a sponsor, a committee path or any real momentum in the House is still the unanswered question, and that may decide whether the bill becomes a message vote or the opening move in a larger fight over who gets to enter the United States.
