Everyone who could be barred under US travel ban as Donald Trump set to update 'red list'

US President Donald Trump may be about to revive his 'travel ban' idea that caused such controversy during his first term.

It all started back in 2017 during Trump's first term of presidency, when he issued an executive order to ban people from certain countries from entering the US.

Trump called it a 'Muslim ban', with most of the countries on the list having majority Muslim populations.

The ban went through several iterations after the US supreme court blocked the initial attempt, before being repealed by Joe Biden on the date of his inauguration in 2021 as he called it 'a stain on our national conscience'.

Now Biden is out of the White House and Trump is back in, the New York Times reports that for his second term the US president is putting together a new ban.

On his second inauguration day earlier this year, Trump set out orders for the US State Department to look at countries 'for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries'.

One of the countries expected to be on the 'red list' of banned countries is Afghanistan, as groups which work to evacuate Afghans have said that people with a valid US visa should 'make travel arrangements immediately'.

Trump's travel ban in his first term was met with a lot of opposition, and the supreme court initially stopped him until he revised it (Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

They are concerned that a travel ban could be announced soon, and Reuters reports that both Afghanistan and Pakistan could end up on a 'red list' where people from the countries would not be allowed to enter the US.

The NYT also reports that other nations being considered for the red list were countries that previous Trump travel bans have covered.

Among the countries that ended up on a travel ban from Trump were Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela.

Whether they would make a new red list is not clear, but people from countries that were previously targeted by a travel ban have been warned they could once again be blocked by the US government.

People from some countries would be outright banned from entering the US, others would only be allowed in under certain conditions (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

In addition to the red list, the NYT reports that there would also be an 'orange' list which would limit visa applications but not ban them outright, and that if Pakistan isn't on the red list then it'll likely be here instead.

People from 'orange list' countries applying for a visa may only get them under certain circumstances, and could be put through an in-person interview before a decision on whether to let them into the US or not was made.

Below those levels may be a third 'yellow' tier which would give countries on the list 60 days to fix problems the US claims it has with their visa application process or face being put onto one of the stricter tiers.