The new travel ban against mostly Muslim or African countries was not nearly the Trump administration’s first attack against immigrants, but Seattle’s Wazhma Samizay said, “This time, it’s hitting me a lot harder.”

Samizay, who is Afghan American and was born in the U.S. but lived in Afghanistan as a child, said unlike the regulations that go into effect Monday, the travel ban in the first Trump administration happened when there was “more balance of power and more pushback.”

Now, she said, the threats are on a whole new level.

Her parents fled Afghanistan due to the Soviet Union’s invasion in the early 1980s to seek safety and to build a life, as so many others have done before them. But even though she’s a citizen, she said, people like her — “because we’re brown, because we’re Muslim” — will never be considered “American enough.”

Samizay is one of the many people in the Seattle area whose family is reeling from the implications of having their countries of origin named in the latest travel ban, a list of 19 banned or partially banned countries so random they betray the absurdity — and racism — underpinning the whole endeavor.

In announcing the ban, Trump used the horrific firebomb attack by an Egyptian man in Boulder against people demonstrating for the release of Israeli hostages as justification, but Egypt is not on the list.

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Countries included in President Trump’s travel ban

The administration tried to argue the list was based on countries with poor vetting and visa overstays, but as The New York Times pointed out, Spain in 2023 had far more overstays than all seven banned African countries combined. Spain, of course, is not on the list.

Just as he tipped his hand in a meeting during his first administration by calling Haiti and other African nations “shithole countries,” Trump said last week in announcing the ban that “we don’t want them” — with “we” and “them” doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Roxana Norouzi, the executive director of Seattle-based immigrant rights organization OneAmerica, said the latest travel ban is “an expansion of Trump’s racist and xenophobic agenda to other immigrants, to place blame on Black and brown people and to advance his cruel agenda of family separation.”

She said the targeting of these countries has deep effects on people in Washington.

For example, Norouzi said her parents came to the U.S. on visas from Iran. If she had been born today, she said, her grandmother would not have been able to visit after she was born because Iran is also on the travel ban list.

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“This is about invoking harm and pain and separation on people in our communities, on our neighbors,” she said. “And it is about blocking and demonizing the citizens of certain countries.”

Many of those countries are already enduring unfathomable hardship and suffering. Sudan, another country on the list, is in the midst of a civil war and facing what the United Nations called “the most devastating humanitarian and displacement crisis in the world.” But instead of looking for ways to provide support and aid, the U.S. has slammed the door shut.

Mubarak Elamin, a Sudanese American community member from Bellevue, wrote on Facebook last week that he was deeply shaken by the new travel ban and its targeting of Muslim and African countries.

“It tells us that our pain, our lives, and our futures are less valuable. This action revives a policy that has historically singled out Muslims and Africans under the false guise of national security. It is discriminatory, xenophobic and deeply unjust. The effects will ripple through Seattle’s Muslims, Sudanese and East African communities, many of whom are already reeling from separation, trauma and isolation.”

Unlike the protests that erupted at airports after the Muslim ban was announced during the first Trump administration, the public reaction to Travel Ban 2.0 has been more muted. Sometimes I fear that part of the administration’s strategy is to normalize cruelty so effectively that it’s no longer remarkable.

But we can’t let ourselves become desensitized to what our government is doing in our name.

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Norouzi said while it might be easy to feel complacent and hopeless right now, we can’t succumb to that feeling. She said people can publicly show their rejection of the administration’s approach, but they can also start talking to their neighbors and friends about the commonalities that connect so many disparate communities.

Samizay has a lot of worries now. The administration’s targeting of birthright citizenship has her feeling more fearful. How will we protect each other? Will we even try?

Though efforts, including the travel ban, are designed to pit groups against each other, she said some common truths connect us all.

“Everybody wants peace. Everybody wants their children to grow up happy and thrive and have an education and have an opportunity,” Samizay said. “That’s what everybody wants. I don’t care where you are in the world or what language that people speak. That is a universal thing.”