Why has Trump revoked all South Sudanese visas?

The United States government has revoked existing visas issued to all South Sudanese passport holders and barred further entries of the country’s nationals due to a failed deportation case, signalling an escalation of the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on immigration.

In a statement on Saturday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio blamed the transitional government of the African nation for a lack of “full cooperation” and accused South Sudan of “taking advantage” of Washington. It’s the first such blanket sanction on any country since President Donald Trump took office in January.

South Sudanese officials have not reacted to the new ban. In posts on social media, however, some South Sudanese accused the US of “bullying” and using collective punishment.

The East African nation, Africa’s youngest, is currently reeling from a new conflict between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar. The United Nations has warned of the risk of a return to all-out civil war if tensions continue to rise.

Here’s what you need to know about why the US imposed the visa ban and how South Sudanese nationals could be affected:

Rubio implied in his statement that South Sudan’s government has refused to take back citizens who had been deported from the US. The matter, he said, involved US national security and warranted the visa revocations and ban.

“Every country must accept the return of its citizens in a timely manner when another country, including the United States, seeks to remove them,” the statement read.

In a more detailed account on X, also on Saturday, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau alleged that South Sudan had refused to take back one person presumed to be from the African country because officials there had determined him to be Congolese after he arrived in Juba. It’s believed the country accepted several other returned people except the deportee in question.

Landau claimed that the individual had, on February 13, been verified as South Sudanese by the country’s embassy in Washington, DC. He also said the embassy issued an emergency travel letter that the US relied on to send the deportee on a flight to Juba. However, upon arrival there, South Sudanese officials determined that he was not actually from the country and returned him to the US, Landau said.